
aass_ ? S 32 5-0 
Book iLo^jf 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 





LO-' 



tG: 




■"*fei 



THE COMPLETE 

POETICAL WORKS OF 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



i^ou^efjolti €tixtion 



WITH ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE 
ILLUSTRATIONS 




^egjiUemdegreM 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY 

($tje JlitjeriJibe pte^Sy CambriDoe 

M DCCCC nil 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONQRf.SS. 

Two Copies Received 

OCT 25 1904 

,Copyrieht Entry 

./7 /^^^ 
CLASS Ot }(Xc No: 



.FS4- 



COPYRIGHT, 1863, 1865, 1866, 1867, 1868, 1870, 1872, 1874, 1S78, 1881, 1883, 18S4, 1886, 

1887, 1888, 1S89, 1890, AND 1891, BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. COPYRIGHT, 

1875, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. COPYRIGHT, 1888, 1889, 1894, I904, 

BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY GEORGE 

F. BAGLEY AND GEORGE W. GATE, EXECUTORS AND 

TRUSTEES. COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY SAMUEL T. 

PICKARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



h 









5" 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

'' i: present Houseliold Edition of Mr. Whittier's Complete Poetical Works in- 
cludes all the poems published during his lifetime that he wished to preserve, 
tcgf-iiier with those contained in the posthumous volume At Sundoion and in 
{;■ authorized Life and Letters of John Qreenleaf Whittier by Mr. S. T. 
i ioi ird. They are arranged according to the classification adopted by the poet 
b', .self in 1888; the lines have been numbered, and many notes have been 
/. -jd at the end of the volume. 

Entirely new plates have been made for this edition, and great care has 
been used in the choice of illustrations. These represent the work of many 
eminent artists, among them M. J. Burns, E. H. Garrett, Alfred Kappes, E. 
W. Kemble, Howard Pyle, Frank T. Merrill, C. S. Reinhart, W. L. Sheppard, 
Frederic Remington, W. L. Taylor, Charles H. Woodbury, and Marcia O. 
Woodbury. 

Boston, Autumny 1904. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



John Greenleaf Whittier, of Quaker birth in Puritan svirroundings, was 
born at the homestead near Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807. 
Until his eighteenth year he lived at home, working upon the farm and in the little 
shoemaker's shop which nearly every farm then had as a resource in the other- 
wise idle hours of winter. The manual, homely labor upon which he was em- 
ployed was in part the foundation of that deep interest which the poet never 
ceased to take in the toil and fortmies of the plain peojile. Throughout his 
poetry runs this golden thread of sympathy with honorable labor and enforced 
poverty, and many poems are directly inspired by it. While at work with his 
father he sent poems to the Haverhill Gazette, and that he was not ui subjection 
to his work is very evident by the fact that he translated it and similar occu- 
pations into Songs of Labor. He had two years' academic traming, and in 1829 
became editor m Boston of the American Manufacturer ^ a paper published in 
the interest of the tariff. In 1831 he published his Legends of New England, 
prose sketches in a department of literature which always had strong claims 
upon his interest. No American writer, unless Irving be excepted, has done 
so much to throw a graceful veil of poetry and legend over the comitry of his 
daily life. Essex Comity, m Massachusetts, and the beaches lymg between 
Newburyport and Portsmouth, blossom with flowers of Whittier's planting. 
He made rare use of the homely stories which he had heard in his child- 
hood, and learned afterward from familiar intercourse with country people, 
and he used invention delicately and in harmony with the spirit of the New 
England coast. Although he came of a body of men who in earlier days had 
been persecuted by the Puritans of New England, his generous mind did not 
fail to detect all the good that was in the stern creed and life of the persecu- 
tors, and to bring it forward into the light of his poetry. 

In 1836 he published Mogg Megone, a poem which stood first in the collected 
edition of his poems issued in 1857, and was admitted there with some re- 
luctance, apparently, by the author. In that and The Bridal of Pennacook he 
draws his material from the relation held between the Indians and the settlers. 
His sympathy was always with the persecuted and oppressed, and while his- 
torically he found an object of pity and self-reproach m the Indian, his pro- 
foundest compassion and most stirring indignation were called out by African 
slavery. From the earliest he was upon the side of the abolition party. Year 
after year poems fell from his pen in which with all the eloquence of his nature 
he sought to enlist his countrymen upon the side of emancipation and freedom. 
It is not too much to say that in the slow development of public sentiment 
Whittier's steady song was one of the most powerful advocates that the slave 
had, all the more powerful that it Avas free from malignity or unjust accusation. 

Besides the poems already indicated, there are a number which owe their 
origin to Whittier's tender regard for domestic life and the simple experience 
of the men and women about him. Of these Snow-Bound is the most mem- 



vi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

orable. Then his fondness for a story led him to use the ballad form in many 
eases, and Mahel Martin is one of a number in which the narrative is blended 
with a fine and strong charity. His catholic mind and his instinct for dis- 
covering the pure moral in human action are disclosed by a number of poems, 
drawn from a wide range of historical fact, dealing with a great variety of 
religious faiths and circumstances of life, but always pointing to some sweet 
and strong truth of the divine life. Of such are The Brother of Mercy, The 
Gift of Tritemius, The Two Rabbins, and others. Whittier's Prose Works are 
comprised in three volumes, and consist mainly of his contributions to journals 
and of Margaret Sinith's Journal, a fictitious diary of a visitor to New England 
in 1678. 

Mr. Whittier died at Hampton Falls, N. H., September 7, 1892. His life has 
been written by his literary executor, Samuel T. Pickard, under the title Life 
and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PROEM 

NARRATIVE AND LEGEND- 
ARY POEMS. 

The Vaudois Teacher . 
The Female Martyr . 
Extract from "A New Eng- 
land Legend" . 
The Demon of the Study 
The Fountain 

Pentucket . . . . . 
The Norsemen • . . 
Funeral Tree of the Sokokis 

St. John 

The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon 
The Exiles .... 
The Knight of St. John 
Cassandra Southwick . 
The New Wife and the Old 
The Bridal of Pennacook . 
I. The Mbrrimac 
II. The Bashaba . 
The Daughter 
The Wedding . 
The New Home . 
VI. At Pennacook . 
VII. The Departure . 
VIII. Song of Indian Women 
Barclay of Ury 
The Angels of Buena Vista 
The Legend of St. Mark 
Kathleen .... 
The Well of Loch Maree . 
The Chapel of the Hermits 
Tauler ... . . 

The Hermit of the Thebaid 
Maud Muller .... 
Mary Garvin .... 
The Ranger .... 
The Garrison of Cape Ann 
The Gift of Tritemius . 
V Skipper Ireson's Ride 

The Sycamores .... 
** Thf PTr-:s at Lucknow 
"M.'^ THE Bees . 

ln Song of Parson 



FA.OE 

1 



III. 

IV. 
V. 



uble-Headed Snake 

TBURY .... 

Iartin: a Harvest 

EM . • • . 

HE RrvER Valley 



3 
4 

5 
6 

8 
10 
11 
13 
15 
16 
17 
21 
22 
25 
27 
30 
31 
33 
34 
36 
37 
39 
39 
40 
41 
43 
44 
46 
46 
52 
54 
55 
58 
61 
63 
65 
66 
68 
69 
70 

72 

73 



75 
75 



PAOB 

II. The Husking . . 76 

III. The Witch's Daugh- 

ter . . 77 

IV. The Champion . . 78 
V. In the Shadow . 78 

VI. The Betrothal . . 80 
The Prophecy of Samuel 

Sewall 80 

The Red River Voyageur 84 

The Preacher, . . " . 84 

The Truce of Piscataqua 91 

My Playmate .... 93 

Cobbler Keezar's Vision 94 

Amy Wentworth ... 97 

The Countess . . . 100 

Among the Hills . . . 102 

The Dole of Jarl Thorkell 110 
The Two Rabbins . . .111 

norembega .... 112 

MmiAM 114 

Nauhaught^ THE Deacon . 121 

The Sisters .... 123 

Marguerite .... 124 
The Robin . . . .125 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim 126 

King Volmer and Elsie . 139 

The Three Bells . . 141 

John Underhill . . . 142 

Conductor Bradley . . 144 

The Witch of Wenham . 145 

King Solomon and the Ants 148 

In the " Old South " . . 149 

The Henchman . . . 150 
The Dead Feast of the Kol- 

FOLK 150 

The Khan's Devil . . .151 

The King's Missive . . 152 

Valuation 156 

Rabbi Ishmael . . . 156 

The Rock-Tomb of Bradore 157 

The Bay of Seven Islands 157 

The Wishing Bridge . . 160 
How THE Women went from 

Dover 160 

St. Gregory's Guest . . 163 
Blrchbrook Mill . . .164 

The Two Elizabeths . 165 

Requital 166 

The Homestead . . . 167 
How THE Robin came . . 168 
Banished from Massachu- 
setts ••••„• ^^^ 
The Brown Dwarf of Rugen 169 



VIU 



CONTENTS 



POEMS OF NATURE. 

The Fkost Spikit . . . 172 

The Merrimac . . . 173 

Hampton Beach . . . 174 

A Dream of Summer . . 17G 
The Lakeside . . . .176 

Autumn Thoughts . . 177 
On Receiving an Eagle's 

Quill from Lake Superior 177 

April 178 

Pictures . . . . 179 
Summer by the Lakeside 

I. Noon ... 180 
II. Evening . . .181 

The Fruit-Gift . . . 182 

Flowers in Winter . . 182 

The Mayflowers . . 183 

The Last Walk in Autumn 184 

The First Flowers . . 188 

The Old Burying-Ground . 189 

The Palm-Tree . . . 191 

The River Path . . . 191 
Mountain Pictures 

I. Franconia from the 

Pemigewasset . 193 

II. MONADNOCK FROM Wa- 

CHUSET . . . 194 

The Vanishers . . . 195 
The Pageant . . . 195 
The Pressed Gentian . . 197 
A Mystery .... 197 
A Sea Dream . • . . . 198 
Hazel Blossoms . . . 199 
Sunset on the Bbarcamp . 200 
The Seeking of the Water- 
fall 201 

The Trailing Arbutus . 203 

St. Martin's Summer . . 204 

Storm on Lake Asquam . 205 

A Summer Pilgrimage . . 206 

Sweet Fern .... 207 
The Wood Giant . . .207 

A Day 209 

PERSONAL POEMS. 

A Lament 210 

To THE Memory of Charles 

B. Storrs . . . .211 
Lines on the Death of S. 

Oliver Torrey . . . 212 

To , WITH a Copy of 

Woolman's Journal . . 213 

Leggett's Monument . 215 
To A Friend, on her Return 

FROM Europe . . . 216 

Lucy Hooper .... 216 

FOLLEN 218 

To J. P 219 

Chalkley Hall . . . 220 

Gone 222 

To RoNGE .... 222 

Channing . . . . 223 
To MY Friend on the Death 

OF his Sister . . . 224 



Daniel Wheeler . 

To Fredrika Bremer . 

To Avis Keene . 

The Hill-Top .... 

Elliott 

Ichabod 

The Lost Occasion 
Wordsworth .... 

To : Lines written after 

A Summer Day's Excursion 
In Peace .... 
Benedicite .... 

Kossuth 

To MY Old Schoolmaster 
The Cross .... 
The Hero ..... 
Rantoul .... 
William Forster . 
To Charles Sumner . 

^-- Burns 

To George B. Cheever 
To James T. Fields 
The Memory of Burns 
In Remembrance of Joseph 

Sturge .... 
Brown of Ossawatomie 

Naples 

A Memorial .... 
Bryant on his Birthday . 
Thomas Starr King 
Lines on a Fly-Lbaf 
George L. Stearns . 
Garibaldi .... 
To Lydia Maria Child . 
The Singer .... 
How Mary Grew . 

Sumner 

Thiers 

Fitz-Greene Halleck 

William Francis Bartlett . 

Bayard Taylor . 

Our Autocrat .... 

Within the Gate 

In Memory: James T. Fields 

Wilson 

The Poet and the Children 
A Welcome to Lowell 
An Artist of the Beautiful 
MULFORD .... 

To A Cape Ann Schooner . 
Samuel J. Tilden 

OCCASIONAL POEMS. 

Eva 

A Lay of Old Time 
A Song of Harvest . 
Kenoza Lake . 
For an Autumn Festival 
The Quaker Alumni 
Our River .... 
Revisited .... 
"The Laurels" . 
June on the Merrimac . 
Hymn for the Opening of 



226 
227 
228 
229 
230 
230 
231 
231 

232 
232 
233 
234 
234 
237 
237 
239 
240 
241 
241 
243 
243 
244 

245 
247 
247 
248 
249 
250 
250 
251 
252 
252 
253 
255 
255 
258 
258 
259 
260 
260 
261 
263 
263 
264 
265 
266 
266 
266 
267 



268 
269 
269 
270 
271 
272 
275 
276 
278 
278 



CONTENTS 



IX 



Thomas Starr King's House 
OF Worship .... 
Hymn for the House of Wor- 
ship AT Georgetown, erect- 
ed IN Memory of a Mother 
A Spiritual Manifestation 
Chicago 

KiNvSMAN 

The Golden Wedding of 
longwood .... 

Hymn for the Opening of 
Plymouth Church, St. 
Paul, Minnesota 

Lexington 

J Library 
VAS A Stranger and Ye 
ok Me in " . 
TENNiAL Hymn . 
x^x School-Close . 
Hymn of the Children 
The Landmarks . 
Garden . . . . . 
A Greeting .... 

Godspeed 

Winter Roses 

The Reunion .... 

NORUMBEGA HaLL 

The Bartholdi Statue . 
One of the Signers . 

THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 

The Tent on the Beach 

The Wreck of Rivermouth 

The Grave by the Lake 

The Brother of Mercy . 

The Changeling 

The Maids of Attitash . 

Kallundborg Church . 

The Cable Hymn 

The Dead Ship of Harps- 



well 

The Palatine .... 
Abraham Davenport . 
The Worship of Nature 

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS. 

To William Lloyd Garrison 
toussaint l'ouverture . 
The Slave-Ships 
Expostulation 
Hymn: " O Thou, whose Pres- 
ence WENT before " 
The Yankee Girt^ . 
The Hunters of Men 
Stanzas for the Times 
Clerical Oppressors . 
A Summons .... 
To THE Memory of Thomas 

Shipley 

The Moral Warfare 

RiTNER 

The Pastoral Letter 
Hymn: "0 Holy Father! 
Just and True" . 



280 



281 

281 
283 
284 

284 



285 
285 
286 

288 
288 
289 
289 
290 
292 
292 
294 
294 
294 
295 
295 
296 



298 
302 
305 
309 
311 
313 
315 
316 

318 
319 
322 
324 



326 
327 
330 
332 

335 
335 
336 
338 
339 
340 

341 
342 
342 
344 

345 



The Farewell of a Virginia 

Slave Mother . 
Pennsylvania Hall 
The New Year . 

The Relic 

The World's Convention 
Massachusetts to Virginia . 
The Christian Slave . 
The Sentence of John L. 

Brown 

Texas: Voice of New Eng- 



land 

To Faneuil Hall 

To Massachusetts . 

New Hampshire . 

The Pine-Tree 

To A Southern States- 
man 

At Washington 

The Branded Hand . 

The Freed Islands 

A Letter . . . . 

Lines from a Letter to a 
Young Clerical Friend . 

Daniel Neall 

Song of Slaves in the Des- 
ert 

To Delaware 

yorktown .... 

Randolph of Roanoke 

The Lost Statesman 

The Slaves of Martinique 

The Curse of the Charter- 
Breakers .... 

P^AN 

The Crisis .... 

Lines on the Portrait of a 
Celebrated Publisher 

Derne .... 

A Sabbath Scene 

In the Evil Days 

Moloch in State Street 

Official Piety 

The Rendition 

Arisen at Last 

The Haschish 

The Kansas Emigrants 

For Righteousness' Sake 

Letter from a Missionary 
OF THE Methodist Episco- 
pal Church South, in Kan- 
sas, to a Distinguished Poli- 
tician 

Burial of Barber 

To Pennsylvania . 

Le Marais du Cygne . 

The Pass of the Sierra 

A Song for the Time . 

What of the Day ? 

A Song, inscribed to the Fre- 
mont Clubs 

The Panorama . 

On a Prayer-Book 

The Summons . 

To William H. Seward 



346 
347 
350 
352 
353 
356 
359 

360 

361 

3()2 
363 
364 
364 

365 
366 
368 
369 
370 

371 
372 

372 
373 
373 
374 
376 
377 

378 
380 
381 

382 
384 
385 
387 
387 
389 
389 
390 
390 
391 
392 



392 
394 
395 
395 
396 
396 
397 

397 
398 
408 
409 
410 



CONTENTS 



t 



In Wak Time. 

To Samuel E. Sewall and 

Harriet W. ISewall . 410 

Thy Will be Done . 411 

A Word for the Hour . 412 
'' EiN FESTE Burg ist un- 

serGott" . . . 412 

To John C. Fremont . 413 

The Watchers . . 414 

To Englishmen . . . 415 

MiTHRIDATES AT ChIOS . 415 

At Port Royal . . . 416 

AsTR^A at the Capitol 417 
The Battle Autumn of 

1862 .... 418 

Hymn, sung at Christmas 
BY THE Scholars of St. 

Helena's Island, S. C. . 419 

The Proclamation . 419 

Anniversary Poem . . 420 

/ Barbara Frietchie . 421 

What the Birds said . 423 
The Mantle of St. John 

DE Matha . . . 423 

Laus Deo ! . . . . 425 
Hymn for the Celebra- 
tion OF Emancipation 

AT Newburyport . 425 
After the War. 

The Peace Autumn . . 427 
To the Thirty - Ninth 

Congress . . . 427 

The Hive at Gettysburg 428 

Howard at Atlanta . 428 

The Emancipation Group 429 

The Jubilee Singers . 429 

Garrison .... 430 

SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM. 

The Quaker of the Olden 

Time 431 

Democracy .... 432 
The Gallows . . . 433 
Seed-Time and Harvest . 435 
To THE Reformers of Eng- 
land 435 

The Human Sacrifice . . 436 
Songs of Labor. 

Dedication . • . 438 

The Shoemakers . . 439 

The Fishermen . . 440 

The liUMBERMEN . . 441 

The Ship-Builders . 442 

The Drovers . . • 444 

.^ The Huskers . . . 445 

The Reformer . . . 447 

The Peace Convention at 

Brussels .... 448 

The Prisoner for Debt . 450 

The Christian Tourists . 451 

The Men of Old . . . 452 

To Pius IX .... 453 

Calef in Boston . . . 454 

Our State .... 454 



The Prisoners of Naples . 455 

The Peace of Europe . . 457 

AsTR^A 457 

The Disenthralled . . 458 
^The Poor Voter on Election 

Day ..... 458 

The Dream of Pig Nono . 458 

The Voices .... 460 

The New Exodus . . . 461 

The Conquest of Finland . 461 

The Eve of Election . . 462 

From Perugia .... 463 

Italy " 465 

Freedom in Brazil . . . 466 

After Election . . . 466 

Disarmament .... 467 

The Problem . . . 467 

Our Country .... 469 

On the Big Horn . . . 471 

POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND RE- 
MINISCENT. 

Memories • . . . . 472 

Raphael .... 473 

Ego 474 

The Pumpkin . . . 476 

Forgiveness .... 478 

To my Sister .... 478 
My Thanks . . . .479 

Remembrance . . . 480 

My Namesake .... 480 

A Memory 482 

My Dream . . . .483 

. , The Barefoot Boy . . 484 
My Psalm . . .485 

The Waiting . . 486 

^- Snow-Bound . . . 487 

My Triumph . . . 499 

In School-Days , . . 499 

My Birthday .... 501 

Red Riding-Hood . . . 501 

Response .... 502 

At Eventide .... 502 

Voyage of the Jettie . 503 

My Trust 504 

A Name 505 

Greeting 506 

An Autograph . . . 506 

Abram Morrison . . . 507 

A Legacy' .... 509 

RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

The Star of Bethlehem . 510 

The Cities of the Plain . 511 

The Call of the Christian . 512 

The Crucifixion • • • 513 

Palestine 514 

Hymns from the French of 

Lamartine. 

I. Encore un Hymne . 516 

II. Le Cri de l'Ame . . 517 

The Familist's Hymn . . 518 

EZEKIEL 519 





CONTENTS 


xi 


What the Voice said . 


521 


Adjustment .... 


.571 


The Angel of Patience 


. 522 


Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj 


572 


The Wife of Manoah to her 


Revelation .... 


572 


Husband 


522 




*J t ^ 


My Soul, and I . 


. 523 


AT SUNDOWN. 




Worship .... 


526 






The Holy Land 


. 527 


To E. C. S 


574 


The Reward . 


528 


The Christmas of 1888 


575 


The Wish of To-Day 


. 529 


The Vow of Washington 


575 


All 's Well . 


529 


The Captain's Well . 


57() 


Invocation 


. 530 


An Outdoor Reception . 


578 


Questions of Life 


530 


R. S. S., AT Deer Island on 




First-Day Thoughts 


. 532 


the Merrimac . 


580 


Trust .... 


532 


Burning Drift- Wood 


581 


Trinitas 


. 533 


0. W. Holmes on his Eight- 




The Sisters . 


534 


ieth Birthday . 


582 


'' The Rock " in El Ghob 


. 534 


James Russell Lowell . 


583 


The Over-Heart . 


535 


Haverhill .... 


583 


The Shadow and the Lig 


HT . 537 


Inscription .... 


685 


The Cry of a Lost Soul 


539 


Lydia H. Sigourney . 


585 


Andrew Rykman's Pray 


er . 539 


Milton ..... 


585 


The Answer . 


541 


To G. G. : AN Autograph . 


585 


The Eternal Goodness 


. 542 


The Birthday Wreath , 


586 


The Common Question 


543 


The Wind of March . 


587 


Our Master 


. 544 


Between the Gates 


587 


The Meeting . 


546 


The Last Eve of Summer . 


588 


The Clear Vision . 


. 548 


To Oliver Wendell Holmes 


689 


Divine Compassion 


550 






The Prayer-Seeker 


. 550 


POEMS BY ELIZABETH H. 




The Brewing of Soma . 


551 


WHITTIER. 




A Woman . 


. 552 






The Prayer of Agassiz 


552 


The Dream of Argyle . 


591 


In Quest . 


. 554 


Lines, written on the Depar- 




The Friend's Burial . 


555 


ture OF Joseph Sturge . 


592 


A Christmas Carmen 


. 55(5 


John QuiNCY Adams 


593 


Vesta .... 


556 


Dr. Kane in Cuba 


593 


Child-Songs 


. 556 


Lady Franklin . . 


594 


The Two Angels . 


557 


Night and Death 


594 


The Healer 


. 558 


The Meeting Waters 


695 


Overruled . 


559 


The Wedding Veil 


595 


Hymn of the Dunkbrs 


. 559 


Charity 


595 


Giving and Taking 


560 






The Vision of Echard 


. 560 


APPENDIX. 




The Minister's Daughte 


R . 563 






Inscriptions. 




I. Early and Uncollected 




On a Sun-Dial . 


. 565 


Verses. 




On a Fountain 


565 


The Exile's Departure . 


597 


By their Works 


. 566 


The Deity ..... 


597 


The Word 


566 


The Vale of the Merrimac 


598 


The Book . 


. 56() 


Benevolence .... 


598 


Requirement 


566 


Ocean 


599 


Help .... 


. 566 


The Sicilian Vespers . 


600 


Utterance 


567 


The Spirit of the North . 


600 


Oriental Maxims. 




The Earthquake 


600 


The Inavard Judge 


. 567 


Judith at the Tent of Holof ernes 


(iOl 


Laying up Treasure 


567 


Metacom ..... 


601 


Conduct 


. 567 


Mount Agiochook 


603 


An Easter Flower Gift 


568 


The Drunkard to his Bottle . 


603 


The Mystic's Christmas 


. 568 


The Fair Quakeress . 


604 


At Last .... 


568 


Bolivar ..... 


(504 


What the Traveller sa 


id at 


Isabella of Austria 


605 


Sunset 


. 569 


The Fratricide .... 


606 


" The Story OF Ida " . 


570 


Isabel 


607 


The Light that is felt 


. 571 


Stanzas 


607 


The Two Loves 


571 


MoggMegone . . . . 


608 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



The Past and Coming Year . 619 

The Missionary ... 619 

Evening in Burmah . . . 621 

Massachusetts .... 622 

II. Poems printed in the " Life 
OF Whittier." 

The Home-Coming of the Bride 622 

The Song of the Vermonters, 1 779 622 
To a Poetical Trio in the City of 

Gotham 623 

Album Verses .... 625 
What State Street said to South 
Carolina, and what South Caro- 
lina said to State Street . . 625 
A Frdmont Campaign Song . 625 
The Quakers are Out . . . 626 
A Legend of the Lake . . 626 



Letter to Lucy Larconi . . 627 

Lines on leaving Appledore . 627 

Mrs. Choate's House- Warming . 628 

An Autograph .... 628 

To Lucy Larcom . . . 628 

A Farewell .... 628 
On a Fly-Leaf of Longfellow's 

Poems 628 

Samuel E. Sewall . . . 629 

Lines written in an Album . 629 

A Day's Journey . . . 629 

A Fragment .... 629 

NOTES 630 

INDEX OF FIRST LINES . . 647 

INDEX OF TITLES ... 652 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (Photogravure) Frontispiece 

From a photogi-aph in 1880 

NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS astist page 

The Bridal of Pennacook 

" Too early voyager with too frail an oar " Howard Pyle 3 

The Fountain 

" Autumn's earliest frost " 8 

From a photograph 

The Norsemen 

" Like white-winged sea-hirds on their way ! " M. J. Burns 11 

Funeral Tree of the Sokokis 

" The solemn pines" Charles H. Woodbury 13 

The Exiles 

" I go, as to the slaughter led " Marcia O. Woodbury 19 

The Bridal of Pennacook 

" Kearsarge lifting his granite forehead to 

the sun " 27 

From a photograph 

" The White Hills, far away " 81 

From a photograph 

Umbagog Lake 84 

From a photograph 

The Legend of St. Mark 

" He . . . knew the face of good St. Mark " Tintoretto 43 

The Chapel of the Hermits 

Rousseau , * 4o 

From an engraving vJ 

Tauler 

Strashurg ' ^^ 

From a photograph 

Maud Muller 

" The young girl mused beside the well " Mary Hallock Foote 56 

Mary Garvin 

" Each knew the other's thought " J- W. Ehninger 59 

" As the preacher prayed, uprising, the aged 

couple stood, 
And the fair Canadian also, in her modest 

maidenhood " J- ^^- Ehninger 60 



XIV 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Garrison of Cape Ann 

" The white gleam of the headland of Cape 
Ann" 

From a photograph 

Skipper Ireson's Ride 

" Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered, and carried in a cart 
By the women of Marblehead " 

Teu-iINo the Bees 

" Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence ! 
Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! " 

Mabel Martin 

" Her face, 
So fair, so young, so full of pain " 

The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall 
Samuel Sewall 

From the painting by Smiberf, in the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society, Boston 

The Preacher 

George Whitefield 

From the painting in Memorial Hall, Harvard 
University 

Whitefield Church 

From a photograph 

Amy Went worth 

" She looks across the harbor-bar 
To see the white gulls fly " 

Among the Hills 

" And once again Chocorua's horn 
Of shadow pierced the water " 
Miriam 

Frederick A. P. Barnard 

From a j)ainting in Cohcmbia University 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim 
Spener 

From an engraving 

William Penn 
Niirnberg 

From a photograph 

The Three Bells 

" All night across the waters 

The tossing lights shone clear " 

The Witch of Wenham 

" ' God keep her from the evil eye, 
And harm of witch ! ' he cried ' ' 

The King's Missive 
John Endicott 

From the painting in the possessiori of the 
Endicott family 

"So passed the Quakers through Boston 
town " 



63 



Alfred Fredericks 


67 


I. H. Caliga 


71 


C. S. Beinhart 


79 




81 




87 




90 



William L. Sheppard 
Charles H. Woodbury 



H. J. Wright 



Frank T. Merrill 



99 

105 
115 

127 

133 
138 

141 

147 
153 



Marcia O. Woodbury 155 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



XV 



How THE WOMEK WENT FROM DoVER 

" Through Dover town in the chill, gray 
dawn. 



Three women 
drawn ! " 

POEMS OF NATURE 

The Frost Spirit 

" He comes, 



passed, at the cart-tail 



comes 



I " 



he comes, — the Frost Spirit 



Marcia O. Woodbury 161 



Hampton Beach 

" Wave after wave 
Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray, 
Shoulder the broken tide away " 

On Receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake 
Superior 

Lake Superior 
From a photograph 

Summer by the Lakeside 

" isles of calm ! dark, still wood ! " 
From a photograph 

The Last Walk in Autumn 

'■ Around me all things, stark and dumb, 
Seem praying for the snows to come " 

The Old Burying-Ground 

" A lonesome acre thinly grown 
With grass and wandering vines " 

The River Path 

" While dark, through willowy vistas seen. 
The river rolled in shade between " 

Mountain Pictures 

" Uplift against the blue walls of the sky 
Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine 
weave 
Its golden net- work in your belting woods " 
From a photograph 

Sunset on the Bbarcamp 

" A gold fringe on the purpling hem 
Of hills the river runs " 

From a photograph 

The Seeking of the Waterfall 

" And still the water sang the sweet, 
Glad song that stirred its gliding feet " 

The Trailing Arbutus 

"The trailing spring flower tinted like a 
sheU " 
From a photograph 

The Wood Giant 

" How dwarfed the common woodland seemed, 
Before the old-time giant ! " 
From a photograph 



Charles H. Woou .ry 172 



M. J. Burns 



W. L. Taylor 



W. H. Gibson 



175 
177 

181 

185 



Charles H. Woodbury 190 



Ernest W. Longfellow 192 



193 



200 



203 



204 



208 



xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PERSONAL POEMS 

To Charles Sumner 

Charles Sumner 210 

From a photograph 

Leggett's Monument 

William Leggett 215 

'• From an engraving 

T a T p 

John Pierpont 220 

From a photograph 

Channing 

William Ellery Channing S. Gamhardella 225 

Kossuth 

Kossuth 235 

Irom a photograph 

The Hejro 

Samuel Gridley Howe 238 

From a photograph 

In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge 

Joseph Sturge 245 

From an engraving 

To Lydia Maria Child 

Lydia Maria Child 253 

From a photograph 

Bayard Taylor 

Bayard Taylor 261 

From a photograph 

Wilson 

Wilson 264 

From a photograph 

To a Cape Ann Schooner 

" Luck to the craft that bears this name of 

mine " 266 

From a j)hotograph 

OCCASIONAL POEMS 

Eva 

" Oh, for faith like thine, sweet Eva " E. W. Kemhle 268 

Kenoza Lake 

' ' Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir, 

Thy beauty our deforming strife " 271 

From a photograph 

Our River 

" But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom on, 

And rivers still keep flowing " Edmund H. Garrett 277 

June on the Merrimac 

" Yet here no evil thought finds place, 

Nor foot profane comes in " 279 

From a photograph 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



xvu 



Frank T. Merrill 



Lexington 

'' They went where duty seemed to call ' ' 

The Landmarks 

" In the heart of Boston town 
Stands the church of old renown " 

From a photograph 

A Greeting 

" To her who, in our evil time, 



Drag-ged into light the nation's crime " 

From a miniature 

The Bartholdi Statue 

" Rise, stately Symbol ! holding forth 

Thy lig'ht and hope to all who sit 
In chains and darkness ! " 

After a photograph 

THE TENT ON THE BEACH 
The Tent on the Beach 

" Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed 
With narrow creeks, and flower-embossed " 

The Wreck of Rivermouth 

" ' Oho ! ' she muttered, ' ye 're brave to- 
day ! ' " 
The Grave by the Lake 

" Deepest of all mysteries. 

And the saddest, silence is " 

The Changeling 

" Lead her out of this evil shadow " 
Kallundborg Church 

" Before him the church stood large and fair " 

The Dead Ship of Harpswe^l 

" The ghost of what was once a ship " 

The Palatine 

" They burned the wreck of the Palatine " 

Abraham Davenport 

Let God do His work ; 
We will see to ours " 

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 

To William Lloyd Garrison 
William Lloyd Garrison 

From a photograph 

The Slave-Ships 

" God of the earth ! what cries ! " 
" The stranger ship went by " 

Expostulation 

Dr. Charles Follen 
From a photograph 



M. J. Burns 
M. J. Burns 



287 



291 



293 



296 



Charles H. Woodbury 


298 


C. H. and M. 0. Wood- 
bury 


303 


Charles H. Woodbury 


307 


Marcia 0. Woodbury 


312 


Charles H. Woodbury 


317 


Charles H. Woodbury 


319 


Charles H. Woodbury 


321 



Marcia 0. Woodbury 323 



32G 



331 
332 

333 



xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Hunters of Men 

'■ Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him 

at bay! " W. A. McCuUough 337 

From a photograph 

Pennsylvania Hall. 

The Pantheon 349 

From a phoiograjjh 

The World's Convention 

" Or Jordan's river-side " 355 

From a photograph 

Mount Vernon 357 

From a photograph 

To Faneuil Hall 

Faneuil Hall 363 

From a photograph 

To A Southern Statesman 

John C. Calhoun 365 

From a daguerreotype 

YORKTOWN 

The Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown John Trumbull 375 

The Curse of the Charter-Breakers 

The Great Hall of Westminster 379 

From an engravi7ig 

Lines on the Portrait of a Celebrated 
Publisher 
Grace Greenwood 383 

Fro^n a photograph 

Moloch in State Street 

State Street about 1840 388 

From a photograph 

The Kansas Emigrants 

The Kansas Emigrants Frederic Bemington 391 

The Panorama 

T. Starr King 399 

Ftom a photograph 

On a Prayer-Book 

Christus Consolator Ary Scheffer 409 

In War Time 

William H. Seward 411 

From a photograph 

Barbara Frietchie 

" Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, 

But spare your country's flag ! " Alfred Kappes 422 

Hymn 

An old house in Newburyport 426 

From a photograph 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



XIX 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 
The Fishermen 

" Where in liiist the rock is hiding-, 
And the sharp reef lurks below " 
Democracy 

" From the blue lake of Galilee, 



M. J. Burns 



It calls a struggling world to thee " 

From a photograph 

The Ship-Butlders 

" Look ! how she moves adown the grooves, 
In graceful beaiity now ' ' 

The Peace Convention at Brussels 
Brussels 

From a photograph 

Our State 

" Nor heeds the skeptic's puny hands, 
While near her school the church-spire 
stands " 
From Perugia 
Perugia 

From a photograph 

The Problem 

" Not without envy Wealth at times must 

look 
On their brown strength who wield the 

reaping-hook " 

On the Big Horn 

" And the dust of the grinded grain. 
Instead of the blood of the slain. 

Shall sprinkle thy banks. Big Horn ! " 

POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 

Raphael 

Raphael 

The Pumpkin 

" On the fields of his harvest the Yankee 
looks forth " 

The Barefoot Boy 

" Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! " 

Snow-Bound 

" A smooth white mound the brush-pile 

showed, 
A fenceless drift what once was road " 
" The cock his lusty greeting said, 
And forth his speckled harem led " 
" We sped the time with stories old " 
" He told how teal and loon he shot, 
And how the eagle's eggs he got " 
" The wise old doctor went his round " 



M. J. Burns 



Harry Fenn 



Raphael 



431 
433 

443 
449 

455 
465 



Charles H. Woodbury 468 



Frederic Eemington 470 



472 



Edmund U Garrett 477 



Edmund H. Garrett 485 



Edmund H. Garrett 488 



Edmund H. Garrett 


489 


Edmund H. Garrett 


491 


Edmund H. Garrett 


493 


Edmund H. Garrett 


497 



XX 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



In School-Days 






" I 'lu sorry that I spelt the word : 
I hate to go above you " 


Sol Eytinge 


500 


A Name 






St. Malo 




506 


From a photograph 






RELIGIOUS POEMS 






The Star of Bethlehem 






'' And what am I. o'er such a land 






The banner of the Cross to bear ? " 


Vesper L. George 


510 


The Ckucifixion 






" A sacrifice for guilt is given ! " 


Van Dyke 


513 


Palestine 






Palestine 




515 


From a photograph 
EZEKIEL 






" Who trembled at my warning word ? 
Who owned the prophet of the Lord ? " 


Michelangelo 


519 


The Holy Land 







Ary Scheffer 



" In thy tall cedars, Lebanon, 

I have not heard the nations' cries " 

From a photograph 

" The Rock " in El Ghor 

" Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, 

Her stones of emptiness remain " 

From a photograph 

The Over-Heart 

" Who lean like John upon His breast " 

The Clear Vision 

" I never knew 
What charms our sternest season wore " 
From a photograph 
The Prayer of Agassiz 
Agassiz 

From a photograph 
The Healer 

" So stood of old the holy Christ 

Amidst the suffering throng " 

The Vision of Echard 

" The veil of sleep fell on him. 

And his thought a dream became " 

On a Sun-Dial 

" With warning hand I mark Time's rapid 
flight " 

On a Fountain 

Dorothea Dix 

From an engraving 

" The Story of Ida " 

" Immortal in her blameless maidenhood " Francesca Alexander 



Dove 



528 

535 
536 
549 
553 

558 



Howard Pyle 


561 


S. J. F. Johnston 


564 




565 



570 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxi 



AT SUNDOWN 

The Captain's Well 

" There 's a well-sweep at every door in town " Edmund H. Garrett 574 
R. S. S., At Deer Island on the Merrimac 
" And ye, O ancient pine-trees, at whose 
feet 
He watched in life the sunset's redden- 
ing- glow " Edmund H. Garrett 580 
Burning Drift -Wood 

" What matter that it is not May, 

That birds have flown, and trees are bare " Edmund H. Garrett 582 

Haverhill 

" What tropic splendor can outvie 

Our autumn woods " Edmund H. Garrett 584 

To G. G. 

" Think of our thrushes when the lark sings 
clear. 
Of our sweet Majrflowers when the daisies 

bloom " Edmund H. Garrett 586 

The Last Eve of Summer 

" Dreaming of long gone summer days like 
this. 
Feeling the wind's soft kiss " Edmund H. Garrett 589 



PEOEM 

[Written to introduce the first general collection of Whittier's Poems.] 

I LOVE the old melodious lays 
Which softly melt the ages through, 

The songs of Spenser's golden days, 

Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, 
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. 

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours 
To breathe their marvellous notes I try; 

I feel them, as the leaves and flowers 

In silence feel the dewy showers. 
And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky. 

The rigor of a frozen clime, 
The harshness of an untaught ear, 

The jarring words of one whose rhyme 

Beat often^Labor's hurried time. 
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. 

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, 
No rounded art the lack supplies ; 

Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, 

Or softer shades of Nature's face, 
I view her common forms with unanointed eyes. 

Nor mine the seer-like power to show 
The secrets of the heart and mind; 

To drop the plummet-line below 

Our common world of joy and woe, 
A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. 

Yet here at least an earnest sense 
Of human right and weal is shown ; 

A hate of tyranny intense, 

And hearty in its vehemence. 
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. 

O freedom! if to me belong 

Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, 

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 

Still with a love as deep and strong ^^ . . . 

As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrme! 

Amksbury, 11th mo., 1847. 




" Too early voyager with too frail an oar " {see p. 39) 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



THE VAUDOIS TEACHER 

" O LADY fair, these silks of mine are beautiful and rare, — 

The richest web of the Indian loom, which beauty's queen might wear; 

And my pearls are' pure as thy own fair neck, with whose radiant light they 

vie ; 
I have brought them with me a weary way, — will my gentle lady buy ?" 

The lady smiled on the worn old man through the dark and clustering curls 
Which veiled her brow, as she bent to view his silks and glittering pearls ; 
And she placed their price in the old man's hand and lightly turned away, 
But she paused at the wanderer's earnest call, — "My gentle lady, stay! 

" O lady fair, I have yet a gem. which a purer lustre flings, 
Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on the lofty brow of kings ; 
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue shall not decay. 
Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a blessing on tliy way ! " 

The lady glanced at the mirroring steel where her form of grace was seen. 
Where her eye shone clear, and her dark locks waved their clasping pearls 

between ; 
" Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou traveller gray and old. 
And name the price of thy precious gem, and my page shall count thy gold.' 



4 NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 

The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow, as a small and meagre book, 
Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his folding robe he took ! 
" Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove as such to thee ! 
Nay, keep thy gold — I ask it not, for the word of God is free ! " 

The hoary traveller went his way, but the gift he left behind 
Hath had its pure and perfect work on that highborn maiden's mind, 
And she hath turned from the pride of sin to the lowliness of truth. 
And given her human heart to God in its beautiful hour of youth ! 

And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil faith had power, 
The courtly knights of her father's train, and the maidens of her bower ; 
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by lordly feet untrod, 
Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the perfect love of God ! 



THE FEMALE MARTYR 

"Bring out your dead!" The mid- 
night street 
Heard and gave back the hoarse, 
low call ; 

Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet, 

Glanced through the dark the coarse 
white sheet. 
Her coffin and her pall. 

" What — only one ! " the brutal hack- 
man said. 

As, with an oath, he spurned away 
the dead. 

How sunk the inmost hearts of all, 
As rolled that dead-cart slowly by, 

With creaking wheel and harsh hoof- 
fall ! lo 

The dying turned him to the wall. 
To hear it and to die ! 

Onward it rolled ; while oft its driver 
stayed. 

And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring 
out your dead." 

It paused beside the burial-place ; 
"Toss in your load!" and it was 
done. 
With quick hand and averted face. 
Hastily to the grave's embrace 
They cast them, one by one, 
Stranger and friend, the evil and the 
just, 20 

Together trodden in the churchyard 
dust ! 

And thou, young martyr ! thou wast 
there ; 
No white-robed sisters round thee 
trod. 



Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer 
Rose through the damp and noisome 

air, 
Giving thee to thy God ; 
Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed 

taper gave 
Grace to the dead, and beauty to the 

grave ! 

Yet, gentle sufferer ! there shall be, 

In every heart of kindly feeling, 30 
A rite as holy paid to thee 
As if beneath the convent-tree 

Thy sisterhood were kneeling. 
At vesper hours, like sorrowing an- 
gels, keeping 
Their tearful watch around thy place 
of sleeping. 

For thou wast one in whom the light 
Of Heaven's own love was kindled 
well ; 

Enduring with a martyr's might. 

Through weary day and wakeful 
night, 
Far more than words may tell : 40 

Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and un- 
known. 

Thy mercies measured by thy God 
alone ! 

Where manly hearts were failing, 
where 
The throngf ul street grew foul with 
death, 
O high-souled martyr ! thou wast there, 
Inhaling, from the loathsome air, 

Poison with every breath. 
Yet shrinking not from offices of dread 
For the wrung dying, and the uncon- 
scious dead. 



EXTRACT FROM " A NEW ENGLAND LEGEND " 



And, where the sickly taper shed 50 
Its light through vapors, damp, con- 
fined, 
Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, 
A new Electra by the bed 

Of suffering human-kind ! 
Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay, 
To that pure hope which fadeth not 
away. 

Innocent teacher of the high 

And holy mysteries of Heaven ! 
How turned to thee each glazing eye, 
In mute and awful sympathy, 60 

As thy low prayers were given ; 
And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, 

the while, 
An angel's features, a deliverer's 
smile ! 

A blessed task ! and worthy one 
Who, turning from the world, as 

thou. 
Before life's pathway had begun 
To leave its spring-time flower and 

sun, 
Had sealed her early vow ; 
Giving to God her beauty and her 

youth, 
Her pure affections and her guileless 

truth. 70 

Earth may not claim thee. Nothing 
here 
Could be for thee a meet reward ; 
Thine is a treasure far more dear : 
Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear 

Of living mortal heard 
The joys prepared, the promised bliss 

above, 
The holy presence of Eternal Love ! 

Sleep on in peace. The earth has 
not 
A nobler name than thine shall be. 

The deeds by martial manhood 
wrought, 80 

The lofty energies of thought. 
The fire of poesy, 

These have but frail and fading hon- 
ors ; thine 

Shall Time unto Eternity consign. 

Yea, and when thrones shall crumble 
down, 
And human pride and grandeur fall, 



The herald's line of long renown, 

The mitre and the kingly crown,' 

Perishing glories all ! 
The pure devotion of thy generous 

heart ^o 

Shall live in Heaven, of which it was 

a part. 



EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENG- 
LAND LEGEND" 

How has New England's romance fled, 

Even as a vision of the morning ! 
Its rites foredone, its guardians dead, 
Its priestesses, bereft of dread, 
Waking the veriest urchin's scorn- 
ing ! 
Gone like the Indian wizard's yell 
And fire-dance round the magic 
rock, 
Forgotten like the Druid's spell 
At moonrise by his holy oak ! 
No more along the shadowy glen 10 
Glide the dim ghosts of murdered 

men ; 
No more the unquiet churchyard dead 
Glimpse upward from their turfy bed, 
Startling the traveller, late and 
lone ; 
As, on some night of starless weather, 
They silently commune together, 

Each sitting on his own head-stone! 
The roofless house, decayed, deserted. 
Its living tenants all departed. 
No longer rings with midnight revel 
Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil ; 21 
No pale blue flame sends out its flashes 
Through creviced roof and shattered 

sashes ! 
The witch-grass round the hazel spring 
May sharply to the night-air sing, 
But there no more shall withered hags 
Refresh at ease their broomstick nags. 
Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters 
As beverage meet for Satan's daugh- 
ters; 
No more their mimic tones be heard, 30 
The mew of cat, the chirp of bird. 
Shrill blending with the hoarser laugh- 
ter 
Of the fell demon following after ! 
The cautious goodman nails no more 
A horseshoe on his outer door, 
Lest some unseemly hag should fit 
To his own mouth her bridle-bit ; 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The good wife's churn no more refuses 
Its wonted culinary uses 
Until, with heated needle burned, 40 
The witch has to her place returned ! 
Our witches are no longer old 
And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold, 
But young and gay and laughing crea- 
tures, 
With the heart's sunshine on their 

features : 
Their sorcery — the light which dances 
Where the raised lid unveils its glan- 
ces; 
Or that low-breathed and gentle tone, 

The music of Love's twilight hours, 
Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan 50 

Above her nightly closing flowers, 
Sweeter than that which sighed of yore 
Along the charmed Ausonian shore ! 
Even she, our own weird heroine, 
Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn, 

Sleeps calmly where the living laid 
her; 
And the wide realm of sorcery, 
Left by its latest mistress free. 

Hath found no gray and skilled in 
vader. 
So perished Albion's " glammaryo," 60 

With him in Melrose Abbey sleep 

His charmed torch beside his knee. 
That even the dead himself might see 

The magic scroll within his keeping. 
And now our modern Yankee sees 
Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries ; 
And naught above, below, around, 
Of life or death, of sight or sound, 

Whate'er its nature, form, or look. 
Excites his terror or surprise, — 70 
All seeming to his knowing eyes 
Familiar as his " catechise," 

Or "Webster's Spelling-Book." 

THE DEMON OF THE STUDY 

The Brownie sits in the Scotchman's 

room. 
And eats his meat and drinks his ale. 
And beats the maid with her unused 

broom. 
And the lazy lout with his idle flail ; 
But he sweeps the floor and threshes 

the corn, 
And hies him away ere the break of 

dawn. 



The shade of Denmark fled from the 
sun, 
And the Cocklane ghost from the 
barnloft cheer, 
The fiend of Faust was a faithful one, 
Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, 10 
And the devil of Martin Luther sat 
By the stout monk's side in social chat. 

The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck 

of him 

Who seven times crossed the deep, 

Twined closely each lean and withered 

limb. 

Like the nightmare in one's sleep. 

But he drank of the wine, and Sind- 

bad cast 
The evil weight from his back at last. 

But the demon that cometli day by 

day 
To my quiet room and fireside 

nook, 20 

Where the casement light falls dim 

and gray 
On faded painting and ancient book, 
Is a sorrier one than any whose uiimes 
Are chronicled well by good King 

James. 

No bearer of burdens like Caliban, 
No runner of errands like Ariel, 
He comes in the shape of a fat old 

man, 
Without rap of knuckle or pull of 

bell; 
And whence he comes, or whither he 

goes, 
I know as I do of the wind which 

blows. 30 

A stout old man with a greasy hat 
Slouched heavily down to his dark, 

red nose. 
And two gray eyes enveloped in fat, 
Looking through glasses with iron 

bows. 
Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who 

can, 
Guard well your doors from that old 

man 1 

He comes with a careless ' ' How d' ye 
do?" 
And seats himself in my elbow- 
chair ; 



THE DEMON OF THE STUDY 



And my morniug paper and pamphlet 

new 
Fall forthwith under his special care, 
And he wipes his glasses and clears 

his throat, 41 

And, button by button, unfolds his 

coat. 

And then he reads from paper and 

book, 
In a low and husky asthmatic tone, 
With the stolid sameness of posture 

and look 
Of one who reads to himself alone ; 
And hour after hour on my senses 

come 
That husky wheeze and that dolorous 

hum. 

The price of stocks, the auction sales. 

The poet's song and the lover's 

glee, 50 

The hori'ible murders, the seaboard 
gales. 
The marriage list, and the jeu d' es- 
prit. 

All reach my ear in the self-same 
tone, — 

I shudder at each, but the fiend reads 
on! 

Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon 
O'er the mossy roots of some forest 
tree. 

The sigh of the wind in the woods of 
June, 
Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight 
sea. 

Or the low soft music, perchance, 
which seems 

To float through the slumbering sing- 
er's dreams, 60 

So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone. 
Of her in whose features I some- 
times look. 
As I sit at eve by her side alone, 
And we read by turns, from the 
self -same book, 
Some tale perhaps of the olden time. 
Some lover's romance or quaint old 
rhyme. 

Then when the story is one of woe, — 
Some prisoner's plaint through his 
dungeon -bar. 



Her blue eye glistens with tears, and 

low 
Her voice sinks down like a moan 

afar ; 70 

And I seem to hear that prisoner's 

wail. 
And his face looks on me worn and 

pale. 

And when she reads some merrier 

song, 
Her voice is glad as an April bird's ; 
And when the tale is of war and 

WH'ong, 
A trumpet's summons is in her 

words. 
And the rush of the hosts I seem to 

hear. 
And see the tossing of plume and 

spear ! 

Oh, pity me then, when, day by day, 
The stout fiend darkens my parlor 

door ; 80 

And reads me perchance the self -same 

lay 
Which melted in music, the night 

before. 
From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet, 
And moved like twin roses which 

zephyrs meet ! 

I cross my floor with a nervous tread, 
I whistle and laugh and sing and 

shout, 
I flourish my cane above his head, 
And stir up the fire to roast him 

out ; 
I topple the chairs, and drum on the 

pane. 
And press my hands on my ears, in 

vain ! 90 

I've studied Glanville and James the 
wise, 
And wizard black-letter tomes which 
treat 
Of demons of every name and size 
Which a Christian man is presumed 
to meet. 
But never a hint and never a line 
Can I find of a reading fiend like mine. 

I 'vc crossed the Psalter with Brady 
and Tate, 
And laid the Primer above them all, 



8 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



I 've nailed a horseshoe over the grate, 
And hung a wig to my parlor wall 
Once worn by a learned Judge, they 

say, loi 

At Salem court in the witchcraft 

day ! 

' ' Gonjuro te, sceleratissime, 

Ahire ad tuum locum ! " — still 
Like a visible nightmare he sits by 
me, — 
The exorcism has lost its skill ; 
And I hear again in my haunted room 
The husky wheeze and the dolorous 
hum ! 

Ah ! commend me to Mary Magda- 
len 
With her sevenfold plagues, to the 
wandering Jew, no 

To the terrors which haunted Orestes 
when 
The furies his midnight curtains 
drew, 

But charm him off, ye who charm him 
can. 

That reading demon, that fat old man ! 



THE FOUNTAIN 

Traveller! on thy journey toiling 

By the swift Powow, 
With the summer sunshine falling 

On thy heated brow. 
Listen, while all else is still. 
To the brooklet from the hill. 

Wild and sweet the flowers are blow- 
ing 

By that streamlet's side, 
And a greener verdure showing 

Where its waters glide, lo 

Down the hill- slope murmuring on, 
Over root and mossy stone. 

Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth 

O 'er the sloping hill. 
Beautiful and freshly springeth 

That soft-flowing rill. 
Through its dark roots wreathed and 

bare. 
Gushing up to sun and air. 

Brighter waters sparkled never 

In that magic well, 20 




" Autumu's earliest frost." 



THE FOUNTAIN 



Of whose gift of life forever 

Ancient legends tell, 
In the lonely desert wasted, 
And by mortal lip untasted. 

Waters which the proud Castilian 
Sought with longing eyes. 

Underneath the bright pavilion 
Of the Indian skies, 

Where his forest pathway lay 

Through the blooms of Florida. 30 

Years ago a lonely stranger, 

With the dusky brow 
Of the outcast forest-ranger, 

Crossed the swift Powow, 
And betook him to the rill 
And the oak upon the hill. 

O'er his face of moody sadness 

For an instant shone 
Something like a gleam of gladness. 

As he stooped him down 40 

To the fountain's grassy side. 
And his eager thirst supplied. 

With the oak its shadow throwing 

O'er his mossy seat. 
And the cool, sweet waters flov/ing 

Softly at his feet, 
Closely by the fountain's rim 
That lone Indian seated him. 

Autumn's earliest frost had given 
To the woods below 50 

Hues of beauty, such as heaven 
Lendeth to its bow ; 

And the soft breeze from the west 

Scarcely broke their dreamy rest. 

Far behind was Ocean striving 

With his chains of sand ; 
Southward, sunny glimpses giving, 

'Twixt the swells of land, 
Of its calm and silvery track, 
Rolled the tranquil Merrimac. 60 

Over village, wood, and meadow 

Gazed that stranger man, 
Sadly, till the twilight shadow 

Over all things ran, 
Save where spire and westward pane 
Flashed the sunset back again. 

Gazing thus upon the dwelling 
Of his warrior sires, 



Where no lingering trace was telling 
Of their wigwam fires, 70 

Who the gloomy thoughts might 

know 
Of that wandering child of woe ? 

Naked lay, in sunshine glowing. 

Hills that once had stood 
Down their sides the shadows throw- 
ing 

Of a mighty wood. 
Where the deer his covert kept, 
And the eagle's pinion swept I 

Where the birch canoe had glided 
Down the swift Powow, 80 

Dark and gloomy bridges strided 
Those clear waters now; 

And where once the beaver swam, 

Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam. 

For the wood-bird's merry singing. 

And the hunter's cheer. 
Iron clang and hammer's ringing 

Smote upon his ear ; 
And the thick and sullen smoke 
From the blackened forges broke. 90 

Could it be his fathers ever 

Loved to linger here ? 
These bare hills, this conquered 
river, — 

Could they hold them dear. 
With their native loveliness 
Tamed and tortured into this ? 

Sadly, as the shades of even 

Gathered o'er the hill. 
While the western half of heaven 

Blushed with sunset still, 100 

From the fountain's mossy seat 
Turned the Indian's weary feet. 

Year on year hath flown forever, 

But he came no more 
To the hillside on the river 

Where he came before. 
But the villager can tell 
Of that strange man's visit well. 

And the merry children, laden 

With their fruits or flowers, — no 

Roving boy and laughing maiden. 
In their school -day hours, 

Love the simple tale to tell 

Of the Indian and his well. 



lO 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



PENTUCKET 



1708 



How sweetly on the wood-girt town 
The mellow light of sunset shone ! 
Each small, bright lake, whose waters 

still 
Mirror the forest and the hill. 
Reflected from its waveless breast 
The beauty of a cloudless west, 
Glorious as if a glimpse were given 
Within the western gates of heaven. 
Left, by the spirit of the star 
Of sunset's holy hour, ajar! lo 

Beside the river's tranquil flood 

The dark and low-walled dwellings 

stood. 
Where many a rood of open land 
Stretched up and down on either 

hand, , 
With corn-leaves waving freshly green 
The thick and blackened stumps be- 
tween. 
Behind, unbroken, deep and dread. 
The wild, untravelled forest spread. 
Back to those mountains, white and 

cold, 
Of which the Indian trapper told, 20 
Upon whose summits never yet 
Was mortal foot in safety set. 

Quiet and calm, without a fear 
Of danger darkly lurking near, 
The weary laborer left his plough. 
The milkmaid carolled by her cow ; 
From cottage door and household 

hearth 
Rose songs of praise, or tones of 

mirth. 
At length the murmur died away. 
And silence on that village lay. 3 : 

— So slept Pompeii, tower and hall, 
Ere the quick earthquake swallowed 

all, 
Undreaming of the fiery fate 
Which made its dwellings desolate ! 

Hours passed away. By moonlight 

sped 
The Merrimac along his bed. 
Bathed in the pallid lustre, stood 
Dark cottage- wall and rock and wood. 
Silent, beneath that tranquil beam, 
As the hushed grouping of a dream. 



Yet on the still air crept a sound, 41 
No bark of fox, nor rabbit's bound. 
Nor stir of wings, nor waters flowing, 
Nor leaves in midnight breezes blow- 
ing. 

Was that the tread of many feet, 
Which downward from the hillside 

beat? 
What forms were those which darkly 

stood 
Just on the margin of the wood ? 
Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight 

dim, 
Or paling rude, or leafless limb ? 50 
No, — through the trees fierce eyeballs 

glowed, 
Dark human forms in moonshine 

showed. 
Wild from their native wilderness. 
With painted limbs and battle-dress! 

A yell the dead might wake to hear 
Swelled on the night air, far and clear ; 
Then smote the Indian tomahawk 
On crashing door and shattering lock; 
Then rang the rifle-shot, and then 
The shrill death-scream of stricken 

men, — 60 

Sank the red axe in woman's brain, 
And childhood's cry arose in vain. 
Bursting through roof and window 

came, 
Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled 

flame, 
And blended fire and moonlight glared 
On still dead men and scalp-knives 

bared. 

The morning sun looked brightly 

through 
The river willows, wet with dew. 
No sound of combat filled the air. 
No shout was heard, nor gunshot 

there ; 70 

Yet still the thick and sullen smoke 
From smouldering ruins slowly broke; 
And on the greensward many a stain, 
And, here and there, the mangled 

slain. 
Told how that midnight bolt had sped, 
Pentucket, on thy fated head ! 

Even now the villager can tell 
Where Rolfe beside his hearthstone 
fell, 



THE NORSEMEN 



II 



Still show the door of wasting oak, 
Through which the fatal death-shot 

broke, 80 

And point the curious stranger where 
De Rouville's corse lay grim and bare ; 
Whose hideous head, in death still 

feared. 
Bore not a trace of hair or beard ; 
And still, within the churchyard 

ground, 
Heaves darkly up the ancient mound, 
Whose grass-grown surface overlies 
The victims of that sacrifice. 



Who from its bed of primal rock 

First wrenched thy dark, uushapelv 
block? 

Whose hand, of curious skill un- 
taught. 

Thy rude and savage outline wrought ? 

The waters of my native stream n 
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam ; 
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar 
The circles widen to its shore ; 
And cultured field and peopled town 
Slope to its willowed margin down. 




'* Like white-winged sea-birds on their way 



THE NORSEMEN 

Gift from the cold and silent Past ! 
A relic to the present cast, 
Left on the ever-changing strand 
Of shifting and unstable sand. 
Which wastes beneath the steady 

chime 
And beating of the waves of Time ! 



Yet, while this morning breeze is 

bringing 
The home-life sound of school-bells 

ringing, 
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar 
Of the fire-winged and steedless car, 20 
And voices from the wayside near 
Come quick and blended on my ear, — 
A spell is in this old gray stone. 
My thoughts are with the Past alone ! 



12 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



A change ! — The steepled town no 

more 
Stretches along the sail - thronged 

shore ; 
Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud, 
Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud: 
Spectrally rising where they stood, 
I see the old, primeval wood; 30 

Dark, shadow -like, on either hand 
I see its solemn waste expand ; 
It climbs the green and cultured hill, 
It arches o'er the valley's rill. 
And leans from cliff and crag to throw 
Its wild arms o'er the stream below. 
Unchanged, alone, the same bright 

river 
Flows on, as it will flow forever ! 
I listen, and I hear the low 
Soft ripple where its waters go ; 40 
I hear behind the panther's cry. 
The wild -bird's scream goes thrilling 

by, 

And shyly on the river's brink 
The deer is stooping down to drink. 

But hark ! — from wood and rock flung 

back, 
What sound comes up the Merrimac ? 
What sea- worn barks are those which 

throw 
The light spray from each rushing 

prow ? 
Have they not in the North Sea's blast 
Bowed to the waves the straining 

mast ? 50 

Their frozen sails the low, pale sun 
Of Thule's night has shone upon ; 
Flapped by the sea- wind's gusty sweep 
Round icy drift, and headland steep. 
Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's 

daughters 
Have watched them fading o'er the 

waters. 
Lessening through driving mist and 

spray, 
Like white-winged sea-birds on their 

way! 

Onward they glide, — and now I view 
Their iron-armed and stalwart crew ; 60 
Joy glistens in each wild blue eye, 
Turned to green earth and summer 

sky. 
Each broad, seamed breast has cast 

aside 
Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide ; 



Bared to the sun and soft warm air, 
Streams back the Northmen's yellow 

hair. 
I see the gleam of axe and spear, 
A sound of smitten shields I hear, 
Keeping a harsh and fitting time 
To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme ; 70 
Such lays as Zetland's Scald has 

sung, 
His gray and naked isles among ; 
Or muttered low at midnight hour 
Round Odin's mossy stone of power. 
The wolf beneath the Arctic moon 
Has answered to that startling rune ; 
The Gael has heard its stormy swell, 
The light Frank knows its summons 

well; 
lona's sable-stoled Culdee 
Has heard it sounding o'er the sea, 80 
And swept, with hoary beard and hair, 
His altar's foot in trembling prayer ! 

'T is past, — the 'wildering vision dies 

In darkness on my dreaming eyes ! 

The forest vanishes in air, 

Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare ; 

I hear the common tread of men, 

And hum of work-day life again ; 

The mystic relic seems alone 

A broken mass of common stone ; 90 

And if it be the chiselled limb 

Of Berserker or idol grim, 

A fragment of Valhalla's Thor, 

The stormy Viking's god of War, 

Or Praga of the Runic lay, 

Or love-awakening Siona, 

I know not, — for no graven line. 

Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign. 

Is left me here, by which to trace 

Its name, or origin, or place. 100 

Yet, for this vision of the Past, 

This glance upon its darkness cast, 

My spirit bows in gratitude 

Before the Giver of all good. 

Who fashioned so the human mind, 

That, from the waste of Time behind, 

A simple stone, or mound of earth, 

Can summon the departed forth ; 

Quicken the Past to life again, 

The Present lose in what hath been, no 

And in their primal freshness show 

The buried forms of long ago, 1 

As if a portion of that Thought 1 

By which the Eternal will is wrought, ' 

Whose impulse fills anew with breath 

The frozen solitude of Death, ] 



FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS 



13 



I 




The solemn pines' 



To mortal mind were sometimes lent, 
To mortal musings sometimes sent, 
To whisper — even when it seems 
But Memory's fantasy of dreams — 120 
Through the mind's waste of woe and 

sin, 
Of an immortal origin ! 

FUNERAL TREE OF THE 
SOKOKIS 
1756 
Abound Sebago's lonely lake 
There lingers not a breeze to break 
The mirror which its waters make. 



The solemn pines along its shore. 
The firs which hang its gray rocks 

o'er. 
Are painted on its glassy floor. 

The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye, _ 
The snowy mountain-tops which 

lie 
Piled coldly up against the sky. 

Dazzling and white! save where the 
bleak, 10 

Wild winds have bared some splinter- 
ing peak, 

Or snow-slide left its dusky streak. 



14 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Yet green are Saco's banks below, 
And belts of spruce and cedar show, 
Dark fringing round those cones of 
snow. 

The earth hath felt the breath of 

spring. 
Though yet on her deliverer's wing 
The lingering frosts of winter cling. 

Fresh grasses fringe the meadow- 
brooks, 
And mildly from its sunny nooks 20 
The blue eye of the violet looks. 

And odors from the springing grass, 
The sweet birch and the sassafras, 
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass. 

Her tokens of renewing care 
Hath Nature scattered everywhere. 
In bud and flower, and warmer air. 

But in their hour of bitterness, 
What reck the broken Sokokis, 
Beside their slaughtered chief, of this V 

The turf's red stain is yet undried, 31 
Scarce have the death-shot echoes 

died 
Along Sebago's wooded side ; 

And silent now the hunters stand, 
Grouped darkly, where a swell of 

land 
Slopes upward from the lake's white 

sand. 

Fire and the axe have swept it bare, 
Save one lone beech, unclosing there 
Its light leaves in the vernal air. 

With grave, cold looks, all sternly 
mute, 40 

They break the damp turf at its 
foot. 

And bare its coiled and twisted root. 

They heave the stubborn trunk aside, 
The firm roots from the earth divide, — 
The rent beneath yawns dark and 
wide. 

And there the fallen chief is laid, 
In tasselled garb of skins arrayed, 
And girded with his wampum-braid. 



The silver cross he loved is pressed 
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest 50 
Upon his scarred and naked breast. 

'T is done : the roots arc backward 

sent, 
The beechen-tree stands up unbent, 
The Indian's fitting monument! 

When of that sleeper's broken race 
Their green and pleasant dwelling- 
place, 
Which knew them once, retains no 
trace ; 

Oh, long may sunset's light be shed 

As now upon that beech's head, 

A green memorial of the dead ! 60 

There shall his fitting requiem be, 
In northern winds, that, cold and free, 
Howl nightly in that funeral tree. 

To their wild wail the waves which 

break 
Forever round that lonely lake 
A solemn undertone shall make ! 

And who shall deem the spot unblest, 
Where Nature's yovmger children rest. 
Lulled on their sorrowing mother's 
breast? 

Deem ye that mother loveth less 70 
These bronzed forms of the wilder- 
ness 
She foldeth in her long caress ? 

As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers 

blow, 
As if with fairer hair and brow 
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below. 

What though the places of their rest 
No priestly knee hath ever pressed, — 
No funeral rite nor prayer hath 
blessed ? 

What though the bigot's ban be there. 
And thoughts of wailing and despair. 
And cursing in the place of prayer! 81 

Yet Heaven hath angels watching 

round 
The Indian's lowliest forest-mound, — 
And. they have made it holy ground. 



ST. JOHN 



IS 



There ceases man's frail judgment ; all 
His powerless bolts of cursing fall 
Unheeded on that grassy pall. 

O peeled and hunted and reviled, 
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild ! 
Great Nature owns her simple child ! 90 

And Nature's God, to whom alone 
The secret of the heart is known, — 
The hidden language traced thereon ; 

Who from its many cumberings 

form and creed, and outward 



Of 



To light 



things, 

the naked spirit brings ; 



Not with our partial eye shall scan. 
Not with our pride and scorn shall 

ban, 
The spirit of our brother man ! 



ST. JOHN 
1647 

"To the winds give our banner! 

Bear homeward again ! " 
Cried the Lord of Acadia, 

Cried Charles of Estienne ! 
From the prow of his shallop 

He gazed, as the sun, 
From its bed in the ocean. 

Streamed up the St. John. 

O'er the blue western waters 

That shallop had passed, v 

Where the mists of Penobscot 

Clung damp on her mast. 
St. Saviour had looked 

On the heretic sail. 
As the songs of the Huguenot 

Rose on the gale. 

The pale, ghostly fathers 

Remembered her well. 
And had cursed her while passing. 

With taper and bell ; 2c 

But the men of Monhegan, 

Of Papists abhorred. 
Had welcomed and feasted 

The heretic Lord. 

They had loaded his shallop 
With dun-fish and ball, 



With stores for his larder, 
And steel for his wall. 

Pemaquid, from her bastions 
And turrets of stone, 

Had welcomed his coming 
With banner and gun. 

And the prayers of the elders 

Had followed his way, 
As homeward he glided, 

Down Pentecost Bay. 
Oh, well sped La Tour ! 

For, in peril and pain, 
His lady kept watch 

For his coming again. 

O'er the Isle of the Pheasant 

The morning sun shone. 
On the plane-trees which shaded 

The shores of St. John. 
"Now, why from yon battlements 

Speaks not my love ! 
Why waves there no banner 

My fortress above ? " 

Dark and wild, from his deck 

St. Estienne gazed about. 
On fire-wasted dwellings, 

And silent redoubt ; 
From the low, shattered walls 

Which the flame had o'errun. 
There floated no banner, 

There thundered no gun ! 

But beneath the low arch 

Of its doorway there stood 
A pale priest of Rome, 

In his cloak and his hood. 
With the bound of a lion. 

La Tour sprang to land. 
On the throat of the Papist 

He fastened his hand. 

"Speak, son of the Woman 

Of scarlet and sin ! 
What wolf has been prowling 

My castle within ?" 
From the grasp of the soldier 

The Jesuit broke. 
Half in scorn, half in sorrow, 

He smiled as he spoke : 

"No wolf, Lord of Estienne, 
Has ravaged thy hall. 
But thy red-handed rival. 
With fire, steel, and ball ! 



30 



40 



50 



60 



70 



i6 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Oq an errand of mercy 

I hither ward came, 
While the walls of thy castle 

Yet spouted with flame. 80 

"Pentagoet's dark vessels 

Were moored in the bay, 
Grim sea-lions, roaring 

Aloud for their prey." 
"But what of my lady ? " 

Cried Charles of Estienne. 
"On the shot-crumbled turret 

Thy lady was seen : 

"Half- veiled in the smoke-cloud. 

Her hand grasped thy pennon, 90 
While her dark tresses swayed 

In the hot breath of cannon ! 
But woe to the heretic, 

Evermore woe ! 
When the son of the church 

And the cross is his foe ! 

"In the track of the shell, 

In the path of the ball, 
Pentagoet swept over 

The breach of the w^all ! 100 

Steel to steel, gun to gun. 

One moment, — and then 
Alone stood the victor. 

Alone with his men ! 

"Of its sturdy defenders. 

Thy lady alone 
Saw the cross-blazoned banner 

Float over St. John." 
"Let the dastard look to it ! " 

Cried fiery Estienne, no 

"Were D'Aulnay King Louis, 

I 'd free her again ! " 

"Alas for thy lady ! 

No service from thee 
Is needed by her 

Whom the Lord hath set free ; 
Nine days, in stern silence, 

Her thraldom she bore, 
But the tenth morning came. 

And Death opened her door ! " 120 

As if suddenly smitten 
La Tour staggered back ; 

His hand grasped his sword-hilt, 
His forehead grew black. 

He sprang on the deck 
Of his shallop again. 



"We cruise now for vengeance ! 
Give way ! " cried Estienne. 

' ' Massachusetts shall hear 

Of the Huguenot's wrong, 130 
And from island and creekside 

Her fishers shall throng ! 
Pentagoet shall rue 

What his Papists have done, 
When his palisades echo 

The Puritan's gun ! " 

Oh, the loveliest of heavens 

Hung tenderly o'er him, 
There were waves in the sunshine, 

And green isles before him ; 140 
But a pale hand was beckoning 

The Huguenot on ; 
And in blackness and ashes 

Behind was St. John ! 



THE CYPRESS-TREE OF 
LON 



CEY- 



Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman 
traveller of the fourteenth century, speaks 
of a cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally 
held sacred by the natives, the leaves of 
which were said to fall only at certain in- 
tervals, and he who had the happiness to 
find and eat one of them was restored, at 
once, to youth and vigor. The traveller 
saw several venerable Jogees, or saints, sit- 
ting silent and motionless under the tree. 

They sat in silent watchfulness 
The sacred cypress-tree about, 

And, from beneath old wrinkled brows, 
Their failing eyes looked out. 

Gray Age and Sickness waiting there 
Through weary night and lingering 
day, — 

Grim as the idols at their side, 
And motionless as they. 

Unheeded in the boughs above 
The song of Ceylon's birds was 
sweet ; 10 

Unseen of them the island flowers 
Bloomed brightly at their feet. 

O'er them the tropic night-storm 
swept, 
The thunder crashed on rock and 
hill; 



THE EXILES 



17 



The cloud-tire on their eyeballs blazed, 
Yet there they waited still ! 

What was the world without to them? 

The Moslem's sunset-call, the dance 
Of Ceylon's maids, the passing gleam 

Of battle-flag and lance ? 20 



They waited for that falling leaf 
Of which the wandering Jogees 
sing : 

Which lends once more to wintry age 
The greenness of its spring. 

Oh, if these poor and blinded ones 
In trustful patience wait to feel 

O'er torpid pulse and failing limb 
A youthful freshnesg»steal ; 

Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree 
Whose healing leaves of life are 
shed, 30 

In answer to the breath of prayer, 
Upon the waiting head — 

Not to restore our failing forms, 
And build the spirit's broken shrine, 

But on the fainting soul to shed 
A light and life divine — 

Shall we grow w^eary in our watch, 
And mvirmur at the long delay ? 

Impatient of our Father's time 

And His appointed way ? 40 

Or shall the stir of outward things 
Allure and claim the Christian's eye, 

When on the heathen watcher's ear 
Their powerless murmurs die ? 

Alas ! a deeper test of faith 

Than prison cell or martyr's stake. 

The self-abasing watchfulness 
Of silent prayer may make. 

We gird us bravely to rebuke 

Our erring brother in the wrong, — 

And in the ear of Pride and Power 51 
Our warning voice is strong. 

Easier to smite with Peter's sword 
Than "watch one hour" in hum- 
bling prayer. 
Life's "great things," like the Syrian 
lord, 
Our hearts can do and dare. 



But oh ! we shrink from Jordan's side. 
From waters which alone can save'; 

And murmur for Abaua's banks 
And Pharpar's brighter wave. 60 

O Thou, who in the garden's shade 
Didst wake Thy weary ones again. 

Who slumbered at that fearful hour 
Forgetful of Thy pain ; 

Bend o'er us now, as over them. 
And set our sleep -bound spirits free, 

Nor leave us slumbering in the watch 
Our souls should keep with Thee ! 



THE EXILES 
1660 

The goodman sat beside his door. 

One sultry afternoon. 
With his young wife singing at his side 

An old and goodly tune. 

A glimmer of heat was in the air, — 
The dark green woods were still ; 

And the skirts of a heavy thunder- 
cloud 
Hung over the western hill. 

Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud 
Above the wilderness, 10 

As some dark w^orld from upper air 
Were stooping over this. 

At times the solemn thunder pealed, 

And all was still again, 
Save a low murmur in the air 

Of coming wind and rain. 

Just as the first big rain-drop fell, 

A weary stranger came, 
And stood before the farmer's door. 

With travel soiled and lame. 2c 

Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hope 

Was in his quiet glance, 
And peace, like autumn's moonlight, 
clothed 

His tranquil countenance, — 

A look, like that his blaster wore 

In Pilate's council-hall : 
It told of wrongs, but of a love 

Meekly forgiving all. 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



"Friend! wilt thou give me shelter 
here ? " 

The stranger meekly said ; 30 

And, leaning on his oaken staff, 

The goodmau's features read. 

"My life is hunted, — evil men 
Are following in my track ; 

The traces of the torturer's whip 
Are on my aged back ; 

"And much, I fear, 'twill peril thee 

Within thy doors to take 
A hunted seeker of the Truth, 

Oppressed for conscience' sake." 40 

Oh, kindly spoke the goodman's wife, 
" Come in, old man! " quoth she, 

" We will not leave thee to the storm, 
Whoever thou mayst be." 

Then came the aged wanderer in, 

And silent sat him down ; 
While all within grew dark as night 

Beneath the storm-cloud's frown. 

But while the sudden lightning's blaze 
Filled every cottage nook, 50 

And with the jarring thunder-roll 
The loosened casements shook, 

A heavy tramp of horses' feet 
Came sounding up the lane. 

And half a score of horse, or more, 
Came plunging through the rain. 

"Now, Goodman Macy, ope thy 
door, — 

We would not be house-breakers ; 
A rueful deed thou 'st done this day, 

In harboring banished Quakers." 60 

Out looked the cautious goodman then, 
With much of fear and awe. 

For there, with broad wig drenched 
with rain. 
The parish priest he saw. 

" Open thy door, thou wicked man, 

And let thy pastor in, 
And give God thanks, if forty stripes 

Repay thy deadly sin." 

"What seek ye?" quoth the good- 
man ; 
" The stranger is my guest ; 70 



He is worn with toil and grievous 
wrong, — 
Pray let the old man rest. " 

" Now, out upon thee, canting 
knave!" 

And strong hands shook the door. 
" Believe me, Macy," quoth the priest, 

" Thou 'It rue thy conduct sore." 

Then kindled Macy's eye of fire : 
" No priest who walks the earth 

Shall pluck away the stranger-guest 
Made welcome to my hearth." 80 

Down from his cottage wall he caught 
The matchlock, hotly tried 

At Preston-pans and Marston-moor, 
By fiery Ire ton's side ; 

Where Puritan, and Cavalier, 
With shout and psalm contended ; 

And Rupert's oath, and Cromwell's 
prayer. 
With battle-thunder blended. 

Up rose the ancient stranger then : 
" My spirit is not free 90 

To bring the wrath and violence 
Of evil men on thee ; 

' ' And for thyself, I pray forbear. 

Bethink thee of thy Lord, 
Who healed again the smitten ear, 

And sheathed His follower's sword. 

" I go, as to the slaughter led. 

Friends of the poor, farewell ! " 
Beneath his hand the oaken door 

Back on its hinges fell. 100 

" Come forth, old gray beard, yea and 
nay," 

The reckless scoffers cried. 
As to a horseman's saddle-bow 

The old man's arms were tied. 

And of his bondage hard and long 

In Boston's crowded jail, 
Where suffering woman's prayer was 
heard, 

With sickening childhood's wail. 

It suits not with our tale to tell ; 

Those scenes have passed away ; no 
Let the dim shadows of the past 

Brood o'er that evil day. 



THE EXILES 



19 



"Ho, sheriff!" quoth the ardent 
priest, 

" Tal^e Goodman Macy too ; 
The sin of this day's heresy 

His back or purse shall rue." 



Ho! 



speed the Macys, neck or 

naught, — 
The river-course was near; 
The plashing on its pebbled shore 
Was music to their ear. 




" I go, as to the slaughter led " 



"Now, goodwife, haste thee ! " Macy 
cried. 

She caught his manly arm ; 
Behind, the parson urged pursuit, 

With outcry and alarm. 120 



A gray rock, tasselled o'er with 
birch, 

Above the waters hung, 
And at its base, with every wave, 

A small light wherry swung. 



20 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



A leap — they gain the boat — and 
there 

The goodman wields his oar ; 130 
" 111 luck betide them all," he cried, 

"The laggards on the shore." 

Down through the crashing under- 
wood. 
The burly sheriff came : — 
" Stand, Goodman Macy, yield thy- 
self ; 
Yield in the King's own name." 

"Now out upon thy hangman's 
face!" 

Bold Macy answered then. — 
" Whip women, on the village green. 

But meddle not with men." 140 

The priest came panting to the shore. 
His grave cocked hat was gone ; 

Behind him, like some owl's nest, hung 
His wig upon a thorn. 

" Comeback! comeback! " the par^^on 
cried, 
"The church's curse beware." 
" Curse, an thou wilt," said Macy, 
"but 
Thy blessing prithee spare." 

"Vile scoffer!" cried the baffled 
priest, 
"Thou 'It yet the gallows see." 150 
"Who's born to be hanged will not 
be drowned," 
Quoth Macy, merrily ; 

"And so, sir sheriff and priest, good- 
by ! " 

He bent him to his oar, 
And the small boat glided quietly 

From the twain upon the shore. 

Now in the west, the heavy clouds 
Scattered and fell asunder. 

While feebler came the rush of rain, 
And fainter growled the thunder. 160 

And through the broken clouds, the 
sun 

Looked out serene and warm, 
Painting its holy symbol-light 

Upon the passing storm. 

Oh, beautiful! that rainbow span 
O'er dim Crane-neck was bended ; 



One bright foot touched tlie eastern 
hills, 
And one with ocean blended. 

By green Pentucket's southern slope 
The small boat glided fast ; 170 

The watchers of the Block-house saw 
The strangers as they passed. 

That night a stalwart garrison 

Sat shaking in their shoes, 
To hear the dip of Indian oars, 

The glide of birch canoes. 

The fisher-wives of Salisbury — 

Tlie men were all away — 
Looked out to see the stranger oar 

Upon their waters play. 180 

Deer Island's rocks and fir-trees threw 
Their sunset-shadows o'er them, 

And Newbury's spire and weathercock 
Peered o'er the pines before them. 

Around the Black Rocks, on their 
left, 
The marsh ]ay broad and green ; 
And on their right, with dwarf shrubs 
crowned, 
Plum Island's hills were seen. 

With skilful hand and wary eye 
The harbor-bar was crossed ; 190 

A plaything of the restless wave, 
The boat on ocean tossed. 

The glory of the sunset heaven 

On land and water lay ; 
On the steep hills of Agawam, 

On cape, and bluff, and bay. 

They passed the gray rocks of Cape 
i^nn, 

And Gloucester's harbor-bar ; 
The watch-fire of the garrison 

Shone like a setting star. 20c 

How brightly broke the morning 

On Massachusetts Bay ! 
Blue wave, and bright green island, 

Rejoicing in the day. 

On passed the bark in safety 
Round isle and headland steep ; 

No tempest broke above them. 
No fog-cloud veiled the deep. 



THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN 



21 



Far round the bleak and stormy Cape 
The venturous Macy passed, 210 

And on Nantucket's naked isle 
Drew up his boat at last. 

And how, in log-built cabin, 

They braved the rough sea-weather ; 

And there, in peace and quietness, 
Went down life's vale together ; 

How others drew arourd them, 
And how their fishing sped, 

Until to every wind of heaven 
Nantucket's sails were spread ; 220 

How pale Want alternated 
With Plenty's golden smile ; 

Behold, is it not written 
In the annals of the isle ? 

And yet that isle remaineth 

A refuge of the free, 
As when true-hearted Macy 

Beheld it from the sea. 

Free as the winds that winnow 

Her shrubless hills of sand, 230 

Free as the waves that batter 
Along her yielding land. 

Than hers, at duty's summons. 

No loftier spirit stirs, 
Nor falls o'er human suffering 

A readier tear than hers. 

God bless the sea-beat island ! 

And grant forever more. 
That charity and freedom dwell 

As now upon her shore ! 240 

THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN 

Ere down yon blue Carpathian hills 

The sun shall sink again, 
Farewell to life and all its ills, 

Farewell to cell and chain ! 

These prison shades are dark and 
cold. 

But, darker far than they, 
The shadow of a sorrow old 

Is on my heart alway. 

For since the day when Warkworth 
wood 
Closed o'er my steed, and I, 10 



An alien from my name and blood, 
A weed cast out to die, — 

When, looking back in sunset light, 

I saw her turret gleam. 
And from its casement, far and white, 

Her sign of farewell stream, 

Like one who, from some desert shore. 
Doth home's green isles descry, 

And, vainly longing, gazes o'er 
The waste of wave and sky ; 20 

So from the desert of my fate 

I gaze across the past ; 
Forever on life's dial-plate 

The shade is backward cast ! 

I've wandered wide from shore to 
shore, 

I 've knelt at many a shrine ; 
And bowed me to the rocky floor 

Where Bethlehem's tapers shine ; 

And by the Holy Sepulchre 

I 've pledged my knightly sword 30 
To Christ, His blessed Church, and 
her, 

The Mother of our Lord. 

Oh, vain the vow, and vain the 
strife ! 

How vain do all things seem ! 
My soul is in the past, and life 

To-day is but a dream ! 

In vain the penance strange and long, 
And hard for flesh to bear ; 

The prayer, the fasting, and the 
thong. 
And sackcloth shirt of hair. 40 



The eyes of memory will not sleep. 

Its ears are open still ; 
And vigils with the past they keep 

Against my feeble will. 



And still the loves and joys of old 

Do evermore uprise ; 
I see the flow of locks of gold. 

The shine of loving eyes ! 

Ah me! upon another's breast 
Those golden locks recline ; 

I see upon another rest 
The fflauce that once was mine. 



50 



22 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



' ' O faithless priest ! O per j iired 
knight ! " 

I hear the Master cry ; 
" Shut out the vision from thy sight, 

Let Earth and Nature die. 

' ' The Church of God is now thy 
spouse, 

And thou the bridegroom art ; 
Then let the burden of thy vows 

Crush down thy human heart ! " 60 

In vain ! This heart its grief must 
know. 



Till life itself hath ceased, 
And falls beneath the self-same 
blow 
The lover and the priest ! 

O pitying Mother ! souls of light, 
And saints and martyrs old ! 

Pray for a weak and sinful knight, 
A suffering man uphold. 



Then let the Paynim work his will, 
And death unbind my chain, 

Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill 
The sun shall fall again. 



70 



CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK 

1658 

To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing rise to-day, 
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath plucked the spoil away ; 
Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the faithful three. 
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set His handmaid free! 

Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison bars. 
Last night across my damp earth-floor fell the pale gleam of stars ; 
In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night-time, 
My grated casement whitened with autumn's early rime. 

Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour crept by ; 

Star after star looked palely in and sank adown the sky ; 10 

No sound amid night's stillness, save that which seemed to be 

The dull and heavy beating of the pulses of the sea ; 

All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow 
The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my sorrow, 
Dragged to their place of market, and bargained for and sold, 
Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from the fold ! 

Oil, the weakness of the flesh was there, — the shrinking and the shame ; 
And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to me came : 
"Why sit'st thou thus forlornly," the wicked murmur said, 
'* Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy maiden bed ? 

20 
" Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and sweet. 
Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant street ? 
Where be the youths whose glances, the summer Sabbath through, 
Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy father's pew ? 

"Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra? — Bethink thee with what mirth 
Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm, bright hearth ; 
How the crimson shadows tremble on foreheads white and fair, 
On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in golden hair. 

"Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for thee kind words are spoken. 
Not for thee the nuts of Wenhani woods by laughing boys are broken ; 30 



CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK 23 

No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid, 
For thee uo flowers of autumn the youthful hunters braid. 

" O weak, deluded maiden ! — by crazy fancies led, 

With wild and raving railers an evil path to tread ; 

To leave a wholesome worship, and teaching pure and sound, 

And mate with maniac women, loose-haired and sackcloth bound, — 

*' Mad scoffers of the priesthood, who mock at things divine. 

Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread and wine ; 

Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the pillory lame, 

Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in their shame. *° 

"And what a fate awaits thee ! — a sadly toiling slave, 
Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage to the grave ! 
Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in hopeless thrall. 
The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn of all ! " 

Oh, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble Nature's fears 
Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of unavailing tears, 
I wrestled down the^€vil thoughts, and strove in silent prayer, 
To feel, O Helper of the weak ! that Thou indeed wert there ! 

I thought of Paul and Silas, within Philippi's cell, 

And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison shackles fell, *° 

Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an angel's robe of white. 

And to feel a blessed presence invisible to sight. 

Bless the Lord for all his mercies ! — for the peace and love I felt. 
Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my spirit melt ; 
When " Get behind me, Satan I " was the language of my heart, 
And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his doubts depart. 

Slow broke the gray cold morning ; again the sunshine fell, 

Flecked with the shade of bar and grate within my lonely cell ; 

The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and upward from the street 

Came careless laugh and idle word, and tread of passing feet. ^ 

At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast. 
And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the long street I passed ; 
I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see, 
How, from every door and window, the people gazed on me. 

And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon my cheek, 
Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling limbs grew weak : 
" O Lord ! support thy handmaid ; and from her soul cast out 
The fear of man, which brings a snare, the weakness and the doubt." 

Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a cloud in morning's breeze. 

And a low deep voice within me seemed whispering words like these : ^° 

" Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy heaven a brazen wall, 

Trust still His loving-kindness whose power is over all." 

We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke 
On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock ; 
The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines on high. 
Tracing with rope and slender spar their network on the sky. 



24 NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 

And there were ancient citizens, cloak-wrapped and grave and cold, 

And grim and stout sea-captains with faces bronzed and old, 

And on his horse, with Raw son, his cruel clerk at hand, 

Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler of the land. 80 

And poisoning with his evil words the ruler's ready ear, 
The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with laugh and scoff and jeer; 
It stirred my soul, and from my lips the seal of silence broke, 
As if through woman's weakness a warning spirit spoke. 

I cried, " The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter of the meek, 
Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler of the weak! 
Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones, — go turn the prison lock 
Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf amid the flock! " 

Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a deeper red 
O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flush of anger spread; 90 

" Good people," quoth the white-lipped priest, " heed not her words so wild, 
Her Master speaks within her, — the Devil owns his child ! " 

But gray heads shook, and young brows knit, the while the sheriff read 
That law the wicked rulers against the poor have made. 
Who to their house of Rimmon and idol priesthood bring 
No bended knee of worship, nor gainful offering. 

Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff, turning, said, — 

"Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this Quaker maid ? 

In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Virginia's shore. 

You may hold her at a higher price than Indian girl or Moor." 100 

Grim and silent stood the captains ; and when again he cried, 
" Speak out, my worthy seamen! " — no voice, no sign replied; 
But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind words met my ear, — 
" God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl and dear ! " 

A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a pitying friend was nigh, — 
I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his eye; 
And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so kind to me. 
Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea, — 

"Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish gold, 

From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold, no 

By the living God who made me! — I would sooner in your bay 

Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child away ! " 

"Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their cruel laws ! " 
Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people's just applause. 
" Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old. 
Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver sold ? " 

I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half-way drawn, 

Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn ; 

Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned in silence back, 

And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his track. 120 

Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of soul; 

Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and crushed his parchment roll. 



THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD 



25 



'• Good friends/' he said, "since both have fled, the ruler and the priest, 
Judge ye, if from their further work I be not well released." 

Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept round the silent bay, 
As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me go my way ; 
For He who turns the courses of the streamlet of the glen. 
And the river of great waters, had turned the hearts of men. 

Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed changed beneath my eye, 
A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the sky, 
A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream and woodland lay. 
And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the waters of the bay. 

Thanksgiving to the Lord of life ! to Him all praises be. 
Who from the hands of evil men hath set his handmaid free; 
All praise to Him before whose power the mighty are afraid, 
Who takes the crafty in the snare which for the poor is laid ! 

Sing, O my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's twilight calm 
Uplift the loud thanksgiving, pour forth the grateful psalm ; 
Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did the saints of old. 
When of the Lord's good angel the rescued Peter told. 

And weep and howl, ye evil priests and mighty men of wrong. 
The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay His hand upon the strong. 
Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging hour ! 
Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to raven and devour ! 

But let the humble ones arise, the poor in heart be glad. 
And let the mourning ones again with robes of praise be clad. 
For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the stormy wave, 
And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty still to save ! 



130 



140 



THE NEW WIFE AND THE 
OLD 

Dark the halls, and cold the feast. 
Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest. 
All is over, all is done, 
Twain of yesterday are one! 
Blooming girl and manhood gray, 
Autumn in the arms of May ! 

Hushed within and hushed without, 
Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout ; 
Dies the bonfire on the hill ; 
All is dark and all is still, 10 

Save the starlight, save the breeze 
Moaning through the graveyard trees ; 
And the great sea- waves below, 
Pulse of the midnight beating slow. 

From the brief dream of a bride 
She hath wakened, at his side. 
With half -uttered shriek and start, — 



Feels she not his beating heart ? 

And the pressure of his arm, 

And his breathing near and warm ? 20 

Lightly from the bridal bed 
Springs that fair dishevelled head, 
And a feeling, new, intense, 
Half of shame, half innocence. 
Maiden fear and wonder speaks 
Through her lips and changing 
cheeks. 

From the oaken mantel glowing. 
Faintest light the lamp is throwing 
On the mirror's antique mould, 
High-backed chair, and wainscot old. 
And, through faded curtains steal- 
ing, 31 
His dark sleeping face revealing. 

Listless lies the strong man there. 
Silver-streaked his careless hair ; 



26 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Lips of love have left no trace 
On that hard and haughty face ; 
And that forehead's knitted thought 
Love's soft hand hath not unwrought. 

"Yet," she sighs, " he loves me well, 
More than these calm lips w^ill tell. 40 
Stooping to my lowly state. 
He hath made me rich and great, 
And I bless him, though he be 
Hard and stern to all save me ! " 

While she speaketh, falls the light 
O'er her fingers small and white ; 
Gold and gem, and costly ring 
Back the timid lustre fling, — 
Love's selectest gifts, and rare. 
His proud hand had fastened there. 50 

Gratefully she marks the glow 
From those tapering lines of snow ; 
Fondly o'er the sleeper bending, 
His black hair with golden blending. 
In her soft and light caress, 
Cheek and lip together press. 

Ha ! — that start of horror ! why 
That wild stare and wilder cry. 
Full of terror, full of pain? 
Is there madness in her brain ? 60 

Hark! that gasping, hoarse and low, 
"Spare me, — spare me, — let me 
go!" 

God have mercy ! — icy cold 
Spectral hands her own enfold, 
Drawing silently from them 
Love's fair gifts of gold and gem, 
" Waken! save me! " still as death 
At her side he slumbereth. 

Ring and bracelet all are gone, 

And that ice-cold hand withdrawn ; 70 

But she hears a murmur low, 

Full of sweetness, full of woe, 

Half a sigh and half a moan: 

"Fear not ! give the dead her own ! " 

Ah! — the dead wife's voice she 

knows! 
That cold hand whose pressure froze, 
Once in warmest life had borne 
Gem and band her own hath worn, 
"Wake thee! wake thee!" Lo, his 

eyes 
Open with a dull surprise. 80 



In his arms the strong man folds her, 
Closer to his breast he holds her ; 
Trembling limbs his own are meeting. 
And he feels her heart's quick beating : 
"Nay, my dearest, why this fear ?" 
"Hush!" she saith, "the dead is 
here ! " 

"Nay, a dream, — an idle dream." 
But before the lamp's pale gleam 
Tremblingly her hand she raises. 
There no more the diamond blazes, 90 
Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold, — 
"Ah!" she sighs, "her hand was 
cold ! " 

Broken words of cheer he saith, 
But his dark lip quivereth. 
And as o'er the past he thinketh, 
From his young wife's arms he shrink- 

eth; 
Can those soft arms round him lie. 
Underneath his dead wife's eye ? 

She her fair young head can rest 
Soothed and childlike on his breast, 100 
And in trustful innocence 
Draw new strength and courage 

thence ; 
He, the proud man, feels within 
But the cowardice of sin ! 

She can murmur in her thought 
Simple prayers her mother taught, 
And His blessed angels call. 
Whose great love is over all ; 
He, alone, in pray erl ess pride. 
Meets the dark Past at her side ! no 

One, who living shrank with dread 
From his look, or word, or tread. 
Unto whom her early grave 
Was as freedom to the slave. 
Moves him at this midnight hour, 
With the dead's unconscious power ! 

Ah, the dead, the unforgot ! 

From their solemn homes of thought. 

Where the cypress shadows blend 

Darkly over foe and friend, 120 

Or in love or sad rebuke, 

Back upon the living look. 

And the tenderest ones and weakest, 
Who their wrongs have borne the 
meekest, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



27 




" Kearsarge lifting his granite forehead to the sun " 



Lifting from those dark, still places, 
Sweet and sad-remembered faces, 
O'er the guilty hearts behind 
An unwitting triumph find. 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 

We had been wandering for many- 
days 

Through the rough northern country. 
We had seen 

The sunset, with its bars of purple 
cloud, 

Like a new heaven, shine upward 
from the lake 

Of Winnepiseogee ; and had felt 

The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy 
isles 

Which stoop their summer beauty to 
the lips 

Of the bright waters. We had checked 
our steeds, 

Silent with wonder, where the moun- 
tain wall 



Is piled to heaven; and, through the 
narrow rift 10 

Of the vast rocks, against whose 
rugged feet 

Beats the mad torrent with perpetual 
roar. 

Where noonday is as twilight, and the 
wind 

Comes burdened with the everlasting 
moan 

Of forests and of far-off waterfalls. 

We had looked upward where the sum- 
mer sky, 

Tasselled with clouds light- woven by 
the sun. 

Sprung its blue arch above the abut- 
ting crags 

O'er-roofing the vast portal of the 
land 

Beyond the wall of mountains. We 
had passed 20 

The high source of the Saco ; and be- 
wildered 

In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crys- 
tal Hills, 



28 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Had heard above us, like a voice in 

the cloud, 
The horn of Fabyan sounding ; and 

atop 
Of old Agioochook had seen the moun- 
tains 
Piled to the northward, shagged with 

wood, and thick 
As meadow mole-hills, — the far sea 

of Casco, 
A white gleam on the horizon of the 

east ; 
Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods 

and hills ; 
Moosehillock's mountain range, and 

Kearsarge 30 

Lifting his granite forehead to the sun ! 

And we had rested underneath the 

oaks 
Shadowing the bank, whose grassy 

spires are shaken 
By the perpetual beating of the falls 
Of the wild Ammonoosuc. We had 

tracked 
The winding Pemigewasset, overhung 
By beechen shadows, whitening down 

its rocks. 
Or lazily gliding through its intervals. 
From waving rye-fields sending up 

the gleam 
Of sunlit waters. We had seen the 

moon 40 

Rising behind Umbagog's eastern 

pines. 
Like a great Indian camp-fire ; and its 

beams 
At midnight spanning with a bridge 

of silver 
The Merrimac by Uncauoonuc's falls. 

There were five souls of us whom 

travel's chance 
Had thrown together in these wild 

north hills : 
A city lawyer, for a month escaping 
From his dull oflice, where the weary 

eye 
Saw only hot brick walls and close 

thronged streets ; 
Briefless as yet, but with an eye to 

see 50 

Life's sunniest side, and with a heart 

to take 
Its chances all as godsends ; and his 

brother, 



Pale from long pulpit studies, yet re- 
taining 

The warmth and freshness of a genial 
heart, 

Whose mirror of the beautiful and 
true, 

In Man and Nature, was as yet un- 
dimmed 

By dust of theologic strife, or breath 

Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore ; 

Like a clear crystal calm of water, 
taking 

The hue and image of o'erleaning 
flowers, 60 

Sweet human faces, white clouds of 
the noon. 

Slant starlight glimpses through the 
dewy leaves. 

And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in 
truth, a study, 

To mark his spirit, alternating between 

A decent and professional gravity 

And an irreverent mirthf ulness, which 
often 

Laughed in the face of his divinity, 

Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite 
uu shrined 

The oracle, and for the pattern priest 

Left us the man. A shrewd, saga- 
cious merchant, 70 

To whom the soiled sheet found in 
Crawford's inn, 

Giving the latest news of city stocks 

And sales of cotton, had a deeper 
meaning 

Than the great presence of the awful 
mountains 

Glorified by the sunset ; and his 
daughter, 

A delicate flower on whom had blown 
too long 

Those evil winds, which, sweeping 
from the ice 

And winnowing the fogs of Labra- 
dor, 

Shed their cold blight round Massa- 
chusetts Bay, 

AVith the same breath which stirs 
Spring's opening leaves 80 

And lifts her half -formed flower-bell 
on its stem, 

Poisoning our seaside atmosphere. 

It chanced 
That as we turned upon our homeward 
way, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



29 



A drear northeastern storm came howl- 
ing up 
The valley of the Saco ; and that girl 
Who had stood with us upon Mount 

Washington, 
Her brown locks ruffled by the wind 

which whirled 
In gusts around its sharp, cold pin- 
nacle, 
Who had joined our gay trout-fishing 

in the streams 
Which lave that giant's feet ; whose 

laugh was heard 90 

Like a bird's carol on the sunrise 

breeze 
Which swelled our sail amidst the 

lake's green islands, 
Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, 

and visibly drooped 
Like a flower in the frost. So, in that 

quiet inn 
Which looks from Conway on the 

mountains piled 
Heavily against the horizon of the 

north. 
Like summer thunder-clouds, we made 

our home : 
And while the mist hung over dripping 

hills, 
And the cold wind-driven rain-drops 

all day long 
Beat their sad music upon roof and 

pane, 100 

We strove to cheer our gentle invalid. 

The lawyer in the pauses of the storm 

Went angling down the Saco, and, re- 
turning. 

Recounted his adventures and mis- 
haps; 

Gave us the history of his scaly clients, 

Mingling with ludicrous yet apt cita- 
tions 

Of barbarous law Latin, passages 

From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet 
and fresh 

As the flower-skirted streams of Staf- 
fordshire, 

Where, under aged trees, the south- 
west wind no 

Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, 
white hair 

Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be 
told. 

Our youthful candidate forsook his 
sermons, 



His commentaries, articles and creeds, 
For the fair page of human loveliness'. 
The missal of young hearts, whose 

sacred text 
Is music, its illumining, sweet smiles. 
He sang the songs she loved ; and in 

his low. 
Deep, earnest voice, recited many a 

page 
Of poetry, the holiest, tenderest lines 
Of the sad bard of Olney, the sweet 
songs, 121 

Simple and beautiful as Truth and 

Nature, 
Of him whose whitened locks on Ry- 

dal Mount 
Are lifted yet by morning breezes 

blowing 
From the green hills, immortal in his 

lays. 
And for myself, obedient to her wish, 
I searched our landlord's proffered 

library : 
A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice 

wood pictures 
Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike 

them; 
Watts' unmelodious psalms ; Astro- 
logy's 130 
Last home, a musty pile of almanacs, 
And an old chronicle of border wars 
And Indian history. And, as I read 
A story of the marriage of the Chief 
Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo, 
Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt 
In the old time upon the Merrimac, 
Our fair one, in the playful exercise 
Of her prerogative, — the right divine 
Of youth and beauty, — bade us 
versify 140 
The legend, and with ready pencil 

sketched 
Its plan and outlines, laughingly as- 
signing 
To each his part, and barring our 

excuses 
With absolute will. So, like the cava- 
liers 
Whose voices still are heard in the 

Romance 
Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the 

banks 
Of Arno, with soft tales of love be- 
guiling 
The ear of languid beauty, plague- 
exiled 



30 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



From stately Florence, we rehearsed 

our rhymes 
To their fair auditor, and shared by 

turns 150 

Her kind approval and her playful 

censure. 

It may be that these fragments owe 
alone 

To the fair setting of their circum- 
stances, — 

The associations of time, scene, and 
audience, — 

Their place amid the pictures which 
fill up 

The chambers of my memory. Yet I 
trust 

That some, who sigh, while wander- 
ing in thought. 

Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden 
world, 

That our broad land, — our sea-like 
lakes and mountains 

Piled to the clouds, our rivers over- 
hung 160 

By forests which have known no other 
change 

For ages than the budding and the fall 

Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than 
those 

Which the old poets sang of, — should 
but figure 

On the apocryphal chart of speculation 

As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with 
the privileges, 

Rights, and appurtenances, which 
. make up 

A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown, 

To beautiful tradition ; even their 
names, 169 

Whose melody yet lingers like the last 

Vibration of the red man's requiem, 

Exchanged for syllables significant, 

Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look 
kindly 

Upon this effort to call up the ghost 

Of our dim Past, and listen with 
pleased ear 

To the responses of the questioned 
Shade. 

I. THE MERRIMAC 

O child of that white-crested moun- 
tain whose springs 

Gush forth in the shade of the cliff - 
eagle's wings, 



Down whose slopes to the lowlands 
thy wild waters shine. 

Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing 
througli the dwarf pine ; 180 

From that cloud-curtained cradle so 

cold and so lone, 
From the arms of that wintry -locked 

mother of stone, 
By hills hung with forests, through 

vales wide and free. 
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced 

down to the sea ! 

No bridge arched thy waters save that 

where the trees 
Stretched their long arms above thee 

and kissed in the breeze : 
No sound save the lapse of the waves 

on thy shores, 
The plunging of otters, the light dip 

of oars. 

Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amos- 

keag's fall 
Thy twin Uncanoonucs rose stately 

and tall, 190 

Thy Nashua meadows lay green and 

unshorn. 
And the hills of Pentucket were tas- 

selled with corn. 

But thy Pennacook valley was fairer 

than these. 
And greener its grasses and taller its 

trees, 
Ere the sound of an axe in the forest 

had rung, 
Or the mower his scythe in the 

meadows had swung. 

In their sheltered repose looking out 
from the wood 

The bark-builded wigwams of Penna- 
cook stood ; 

There glided the corn-dance, the coun- 
cil-fire shone, 

And against the red war-post the 
hatchet was thrown. 200 

There the old smoked in silence their 

pipes, and the young 
To the pike and the white-perch their 

baited lines flung ; 
There the boy shaped his arrows, and 

there the shy maid 
Wove her many-hued baskets and 

bright wampum braid. 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



31 



O Stream of the Mountains ! if answer 

of thine 
Could rise from tliy waters to question 

of mine, 
Methiuks through the din of thy 

thronged banks a moan 
Of sorrow would swell for the days 

which have gone. 



A glance upon Tradition's shadowy 

ground, 
Led by the few pale lights which, 

glimmering round 
That dim, strange land of Eld, seem 

dying fast ; 
And that which history gives not to 

the eye, 




" The White Hills, far away " 



Not for thee the dull jar of the loom 

and the wheel, 
The gliding of shuttles, the ringing 

of steel; 210 

But that old voice of waters, of bird 

and of breeze. 
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling 

of trees ! 

II. THE BASHABA 

Lift we the twilight curtains of the 

Past, 
And, turning from familiar §ight 

and sound. 
Sadly and full of reverence let us 

cast 



The faded coloring of Time's tapestry, 

Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped 

brush, supply. 221 

Roof of bark and walls of pine. 
Through whose chinks the sun- 
beams shine. 
Tracing many a golden line 

On the ample floor within ; 
Where, upon that earth-floor stark. 
Lay the gaudy mats of bark, 
With the bear's hide, rough and 
dark. 

And the red-deer's skin. 

Window -tracery, small and slight, 
Woven of the willow white, 231 



32 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Leut a dimly checkered light ; 

And the night-stars glimmered 
down, 
Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke, 
Slowly through au opening broke, 
In the low loof, ribbed with oak, 

Sheathed with hemlock brown. 

Gloomed behind the changeless 

shade 
By the solemn pine-wood made; 
Through the rugged palisade, 240 

In the open foreground planted, 
Glimpses came of rowers rowing. 
Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blow- 
ing, 
Steel-like gleams of water flowing, 

In the sunlight slanted. 

Here the mighty Bashaba 

Held his long-unquestioned sway. 

From the White Hills, far away, 

To the great sea's sounding shore ; 
Chief of chiefs, his regal word 250 
All the river Sachems heard. 
At his call the war-dance stirred. 

Or was still once more. 

There his spoils of chase and war. 
Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw. 
Panther's skin and eagle's claw, 

Lay beside his axe and bow ; 
And, adown the roof-pole hung. 
Loosely on a snake-skin strung, 
In the smoke his scalp-locks swung 

Grimly to and fro. 261 

Nightly down the river going. 
Swifter was the hunter's rowing, 
When he saw that lodge-fire glowing 

O'er the waters still and red ; 
And the squaw's dark eye burned 

brighter. 
And she drew her blanket tighter, 
As, with quicker step and lighter. 

From that door she fled. 

For that chief had magic skill, 270 
And a Panisee's dark will. 
Over powers of good and ill, 

Powers which bless and powers 
which ban ; 
Wizard lord of Pennacook, 
Chiefs upon their war-path shook. 
When they met the steady look 

Of that wise dark man. 



Tales of him the gray squaw told, 
When the winter night-wind cold 279 
Pierced her blanket's thickest fold. 

And her fire burned low and 
small, 
Till the very child abed 
Drew its bear- skin over head, 
Shrinking from the pale lights shed 

On the trembling wall. 

All the subtle spirits hiding 
Under earth or wave, abiding 
In the caverued rock, or riding 

Misty clouds or morning breeze ; 
Every dark intelligence, 290 

Secret soul, and influence 
Of all things which outward sense 

Feels, or hears, or sees, — 

These the wizard's skill confessed, 
At his bidding banned or blessed, 
Stormf ul woke or lulled to rest 

Wind and cloud, and fire and 
flood; 
Burned for him the drifted snow, 
Bade through ice fresh lilies blow. 
And the leaves of summer grow 300 

Over winter's wood ! 

Not untrue that tale of old ! 
Now, as then, the wise and bold 
All the powers of Nature hold 

Subject to their kingly will ; 
From the wondering crowds ashore. 
Treading life's wild waters o'er, 
As upon a marble floor. 

Moves the strong man still. 

Still, to such, life's elements 310 

With their sterner laws dispense. 
And the chain of consequence 

Broken in their pathway lies ; 
Time and change their vassals mak- 
ing. 
Flowers from icy pillows waking, 
Tresses of tlie sunrise shaking 

Over midnight skies. 

Still, to th' earnest soul, the sun 

Rests on towered Gibeon, 

And the moon of Ajalon 320 

Lights the battle-grounds of life ; 
To his aid the strong reverses 
Hidden powers and giant forces. 
And the high stars, in their courses. 

Mingle in his strife I 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



35 



III. THE DAUGHTER 

The soot-black brows of men, the 
yell 
Of women thronging round the 
bed, 
The tinkling charm of ring and 
shell, 
The Powah whispering o'er the 
dead! 
All these the Sachem's home had 
known, 330 

When, on her journey long and 
wild 
To the dim World of Souls, alone, 
In her young beauty passed the mo- 
ther of his child. 

Three bow-shots from the Sachem's 
dwelling 
They laid her in the walnut shade, 
Where a green hillock gently swell- 
ing 
Her fitting mound of burial made. 
There trailed the vine in summer 
hours. 
The tree-perched squirrel dropped 
his shell, — 
On velvet moss and pale-hued 
flowers, 340 

Woven with leaf and spray, the soft- 
ened sunshine fell ! 

The Indian's heart is hard and cold. 

It closes darkly o'er its care. 
And formed in Nature's sternest 
mould, 
Is slow to feel, and strong to 
bear. 
The war-paint on the Sachem's face, 
Unwet with tears, shone fierce and 
red, 
And still, in battle or in chase, 
Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped be- 
neath his foremost tread. 

Yet when her name was heard no 
more, 35° 

And when the robe her mother 
gave, 
And small, light moccasin she wore. 
Had slowly wasted on her grave. 
Unmarked of him the dark maids 
sped 
Their sunset dance and moonlit 
play ; 



No other shared his lonely bed. 
No other fair young head upon his 
bosom lay. 

A lone, stern man. Yet, as some- 
times 
The tempest-smitten tree receives 
From one small root the sap which 
climbs 360 

Its topmost spray and crowning 
leaves, 
So from his child the Sachem drew 
A life of Love and Hope, and felt 
His cold and rugged nature through 
The softness and the warmth of her 
young being melt. 

A laugh which in the woodland rang 
Bemocking April's gladdest 
bird, — 
A light and graceful form which 
sprang 
To meet him when his step was 
heard, — 
Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark, 
Small fingers stringing bead and 
shell 371 

Or weaving mats of bright-hued 
bark, — 
With these the household-god had 
graced his wigwam well. 

Child of the forest! strong and free. 
Slight-robed, with loosely flowing 
hair, 
She swam the lake or climbed the 
tree, 
Or struck the flying bird in air. 
O'er the heaped drifts of winter's 
moon 
Her snow-shoes tracked the hunt- 
er's way ; 
And dazzling in the summer noon 
The blade of her light oar threw off 
its shower of spray ! 381 

Unknown to her the rigid rule, 
The dull restraint, the chiding 
frown. 
The weary torture of the school. 

The taming of wild nature down. 
Her only lore, the legends told 

Around the hunter's fire at night ; 
Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled, 
Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, 
unquestioned in her sight. 



34 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Unknown to her the subtle skill 390 
With which the artist-eye can 
trace 
In rock and tree and lake and hill 
The outlines of divinest grace ; 
Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest, 
Which sees, admires, yet yearns 
alway ; 
Too closely on her mother's breast 
To note her smiles of love the child of 
Nature lay ! 

It is enough for such to be 

Of common, natural things a part, 

To feel, with bird and stream and 

tree, 400 

The pulses of the same great heart ; 



Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo 

Their mingling shades of joy and ill 
The instincts of her nature threw ; 

The savage was a woman still. 
Midst outlines dim of maiden 
schemes, 
Heart-colored prophecies of life, 
Rose on the ground of her young 
dreams 420 

The light of a new home, the lover and 
the wife. 

IV. THE WEDDING 

Cool and dark fell the autumn night, 
But the Biishaba's wigwam glowed 

with light, 




Umbagog Lake 



stranger-tended 



But we, from Nature long exiled, 
In our cold homes of Art and 
Thought 
Grieve like the 
child, 

Which seeks its mother's arms, and 
sees but feels them not. 

The garden rose may richly bloom 

In cultured soil and genial air, 
To cloud the light of Fashion's room 
Or droop in Beauty's midnight 
hair ; 
In lonelier grace, to sun and dew 410 
The sweetbrier on the hillside 
shows 
Its single leaf and fainter hue, 
Untrained and wildly free, yet still a 
sister rose ! 



For down from its roof, by green 

withes hung. 
Flaring and smoking the pine-knots 

swung. 

And along the river great wood-fires 
Shot into the night their long, red spires, 
Showing behind the tall, dark wood. 
Flashing before on the sweeping flood. 

In the changeful wind, with shimmer 
and shade, 430 

Now high, now low, that firelight 
played, 

On tree-leaves wet with evening dews, 

On gliding water and still canoes. 

The trapper that night on Turee's 
brook, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



35 



And the weary fisher on Contoocook, 
Saw over the marshes, and through 

the pine, 
And down on the river, the dance- 
lights shine. 

For the Saugus Sachem had come to 

woo 
The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo, 
And laid at her father's feet that 

night 440 

His softest furs and wampum white. 

From the Crystal Hills to the far 

southeast 
The river Sagamores came to the feast ; 
And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds 

shook 
Sat down on the mats of Pennacook. 

They came from Sunapee's shore of 

rock, 
From the snowy sources of Snooga- 

nock. 
And from rough Coos whose thick 

woods shake 
Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake. 449 

From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass, 
Wild as his home, came Chepewass ; 
And the Keenomps of the hills which 

throw 
Their shade on the Smile of Manito. 

With pipes of peace and bows un- 
strung, 

Glowing with paint came old and 
young, 

In wampum and furs and feathers 
arrayed, 

To the dance and feast the Bashaba 
made. 

Bird of the air and beast of the field, 
All which the woods and the waters 

yield, 459 

On dishes of birch and hemlock piled, 
Garnished and graced that banquet 

wild. 

Steaks of the brown bear fat and large 
From the rocky slopes of the Kear- 

sarge ; 
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook, 
And salmon speared in the Contoo- 
cook : 



Squirrels which fed where nuts fell 

thick 
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic ; 
And snfall wild -hens in reed-snares 

caught 
From the banks of Sondagardee 

brought ; 

Pike and perch from the Suncook 

taken, 470 

Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills 

shaken. 
Cranberries picked in the Squamscot 

bog, 
And grapes from the vines of Piscata- 

quog: 

And, drawn from that great stone vase 

which stands 
In the river scooped by a spirit's hands. 
Garnished with spoons of shell and 

horn. 
Stood the birchen dishes of smoking 

corn. 

Thus bird of the air and beast of the 

field, 
All which the woods and the waters 

yield, 
Furnished in that olden day 480 

The bridal feast of the Bashaba. 

And merrily when that feast was done 

On the fire-lit green the dance be- 
gun, 

With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper 
hum 

Of old men beating the Indian drum. 

Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks 

flowing. 
And red arms tossing and black eyes 

glowing, 
Now in the light and now in the shade 
Around tlie fires the dancers played. 

The step was quicker, the song more 
shrill, 490 

And the beat of the small drums 
louder still 

Whenever within the circle drew 

The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo. 

The moons of forty winters had shed 
Their snow upon that chieftain's 
head, 



3^ 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And toil and care and battle's chance 
Had seamed his hard, dark counte- 
nance. 

A fawn beside the bison grim, — 
Why turns the bride's fond eye on 

him, 
In whose cold look is naught beside 
The triumph of a sullen pride ? 501 

Ask why the graceful grape entwines 
The rough oak with her arm of vines ; 
And why the gray rock's rugged cheek 
The soft lips of the mosses seek : 

Why, with wise instinct. Nature 

seems 
To harmonize her wide extremes, 
Linking the stronger with the weak, 
The haughty with the soft and meek ! 

V. THE NEW HOME 

A wild and broken landscape, spiked 
with firs, 510 

Roughening the bleak horizon's 
northern edge ; 

Steep, cavernous hillsides, where 
black hemlock spurs 
And sharp, gray splinters of the 
wind-swept ledge 

Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bris- 
tling rose, 

Where the cold rim of the sky sunk 
down upon the snows. 

And eastward cold, wide marshes 
stretched away, 
Dull, dreary flats without a bush or 
tree, 

O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where 
twice a day 
Gurgled the waters of the moon- 
struck sea ; 

And faint with distance came tiie 
stifled roar, 520 

The melancholy lapse of waves on that 
low shore. 

No cheerful village with its mingling 
smokes, 
No laugh of children wrestling in 
the snow, 
No camp-fire blazing through the hill- 
side oaks, 
No fishers kneeling on the ice below ; 



Yet midst all desolate things of sound 

and view, 
Through the long winter moons 

smiled dark-eyed Weetamoo. 

Her heart had found a home ; and 
freshly all 
Its beautiful affections overgrew 

Their rugged prop. As o'er some 
granite wall 530 

Soft vine-leaves open to the moisten- 
ing dew 

And warm bright sun, the love of that 
young wife 

Found on a hard cold breast the dew 
and warmth of life. 

The steep, bleak hills, the melancholy 

shore. 
The long, dead level of the marsh 

between, 
A coloring of unreal beauty wore 
Through the soft golden mist of 

young love seen. 
For o'er those hills and from that 

dreary plain. 
Nightly she welcomed home her 

hunter chief again. 

No warmth of heart, no passionate 
burst of feeling 540 

Repaid her welcoming smile and 
parting kiss. 

No fond and playful dalliance half 
concealing, 
Under the guise of mirth, its ten- 
derness ; 

But, in their stead, the warrior's set- 
tled pride. 

And vanity's pleased smile with hom- 
age satisfied. 

Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone 
Sat on his mat and slumbered at his 

side ; 
That he whose fame to her young ear 

had flown 
Now looked upon her proudly as his 

bride ; 
That he whose name the Mohawk 

trembling heard 550 

Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly 

look or word. 

For she had learned the maxims of her 
race, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



37 



Which teach the woman to become 
a slave, 

And feel herself the pardonless dis- 
grace 
Of love's fond weakness in the wise 
and brave, — 

The scandal and the shame which they 
incur. 

Who give to woman all which man 
requires of her. 

So passed the winter moons. The sun 
at last 
Broke link by link the frost chain of 
the rills, 

And the-warm breathings of the south- 
west passed 560 
Over the hoar rime of the Saugus 
hills ; 

The gray and desolate marsh grew 
green once more, 

And the birch-tree's tremulous shade 
fell round the Sachem's door. 

Then from far Pennacook swift run- 
ners came, 
With gift and greeting for the 
Saugus chief; 

Beseeching him in the great Sachem's 
name, 
That, with the coming of the flower 
and leaf, 

The song of birds, the wai-m breeze 
and the rain. 

Young Weetamoo might greet her 
lonely sire again. 

And Wiunepurkit called his chiefs 
together, 570 

And a grave council in his wigwam 
met. 

Solemn and brief in words, considering 
whether 
The rigid rules of forest etiquette 

Permitted Weetamoo once more to 
look 

Upon her father's face and green- 
banked Pennacook. 

With interludes of pipe -smoke and 
strong water, 
The forest sages pondered, and at 
length 
Concluded in a body to escort her 
Up to her father's home of pride 
and strength, 



Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense 

Of Winnepurkit's power and regal 

consequence. 581 

So through old woods which Aukee- 
tamit's hand 
A soft and many-shaded greenness 
lent, 

Over high breezy hills, and meadow 
land 
Yellow with flowers, the wild pro- 
cession went, 

Till, rolling down its wooded banks 
between, 

A broad, clear, mountain stream, the 
Merrimac was seen. 

The hunter leaning on his bow un- 
drawn, 
The fisher lounging on the pebbled 
shores, 

Squaws in the clearing dropping the 
seed-corn, 590 

Yoimg children peering through the 
wigwam doors, 

Saw with delight, surrounded by her 
train 

Of painted Saugus braves, their Wee- 
tamoo again. 

VI. AT PENNACOOK 

The hills are dearest which our child- 
ish feet 

Have climbed the earliest; and the 
streams most sweet 

Are ever those at which our young 
lips drank 

Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy 
bank. 

Midst the cold dreary sea-watcli. 
Home's hearth-light 

Shines round the helmsman plunging 
through the night ; 

And still, wTth inward eye, the travel- 
ler sees 600 

In close, dark, stranger streets his na- 
tive trees. 

The home-sick dreamer's brow is 
nightly fanned 

By breezes whispering of his native 
land, 

And on the stranger's dim and dying 
eye 

The soft, sweet pictures of his child- 
hood lie. 



38 



NARRx\TIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once 

more 
A child upon her father's wigwam 

floor ! 
Once more with her old fondness to 

beguile 
From his cold eye the strange light of 

a smile. 

The long, bright days of summer 
swiftly passed, 6io 

The dry leaves whirled in autumn's 
rising blast, 

And evening cloud and whitening 
sunrise rime 

Told of the coming of the winter-time. 

But vainly looked, the while, young 

Weetamoo 
Down the dark river for her chief's 

canoe; 
No dusky messenger from Saugus 

brought 
The grateful tidings which the young 

wife sought. 

At length a runner from her father sent, 
To Winnepurkit's sea-cooled wigwam 

went; 
" Eagle of Saugus, — in the woods the 

dove 620 

Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of 

love." 

But the dark chief of Saugus turned 

aside 
In the grim anger of hard-hearted 

pride; 
" I bore her as became a chieftain's 

daughter. 
Up to her home beside the gliding 

water. 

" If now no more a mat for her is 

found 
Of all which line her father's wigwam 

round. 
Let Pennacook call out his warrior 

train, 
And send her back with wampum gifts 

again." 

The baffled runner turned upon his 
track, 630 

Bearing the words of Winnepurkit 
back. 



" Dog of the Marsh," cried Pennacook, 

"no more 
Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam 

floor. 

" Go, let him seek some meaner squaw 

to spread 
The stolen bear-skin of his beggar's 

bed; 
Son of a fish-hawk ! let him dig his 

clams 
For some vile daughter of the Aga- 

wams, 

" Or coward Nipmucks ! may his scalp 
dry black 

In Mohawk smoke, before I send her 
back." 

He shook his clenched hand towards 
the ocean wave, 640 

While hoarse assent his listening coun- 
cil gave. 

Alas, poor bride ! can thy grim sire 

impart 
His iron hardness to thy woman's 

heart ? 
Or cold self-torturing pride like his 

atone 
For love denied and life's warm beauty 

flown? 

On Autumn's gray and mournful grave 

the snow 
Hung its white wreaths; with stifled 

voice and low 
The river crept, by one vast bridge 

o'ercrossed, 
Built by the hoar-locked artisan of 

Frost. 

And many a moon in beauty newly born 
Pierced the red sunset with her silver 
horn, 651 

Or, from the east, across her azure field 
Rolled the wide brightness of her full- 
orbed shield. 

Yet Winnepurkit came not, — on the 

mat 
Of the scorned wife her dusky rival 

sat; 
And he, the while, in Western woods 

afar, 
Urged the long chase, or trod the path 

of war. 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK 



39 



Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a 

chief ! 
Waste not on him the sacredness of 

grief; 
Be the fierce spirit of tliy sire thine 

own, 660 

His lips of scorning, and his heart of 

stone. 

What heeds the warrior of a hundred 

fights, 
The storm-worn watcher through 

long hunting nights, 
Cold, crafty, proud of woman's weak 

distress, 
Her home-bound grief and pining 

loneliness? 



VII. THE DEPARTURE 

The wild March rains had fallen fast 
and long 

The snowy mountains of the North 
among, 

Making each vale a watercourse, each 
hill 

Bright with the cascade of some new- 
made rill. 

Gnawed by the sunbeams, softened by 

the rain, 670 

Heaved underneath by the swollen 

current's strain. 
The ice-bridge yielded, and the Merri- 

mac 
Bore the huge ruin crashing down its 

track. 

On that strong turbid water, a small 

boat 
Guided by one weak hand was seen to 

float; 
Evil the fate which loosed it from the 

shore. 
Too early voyager with too frail an 

oar ! 

Down the vexed centre of that rushing 
tide, 

The thick, huge ice-blocks threaten- 
ing either side, 

The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in 
view, 680 

With arrowy swiftness sped that light 
canoe. 



The trapper, moistening his moose's 

meat 
On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc's 

feet. 
Saw the swift boat flash down the 

troubled stream ; 
Slept he, or waked he ? was it truth or 

dream ? 

The straining eye bent fearfully before, 

The small hand clenching on the use- 
less oar. 

The bead-wrought blanket trailing 
o'er the water — 

He knew them all — woe for the 
Sachem's daughter ! 689 

Sick and aweary of her lonely life, 
Heedless of peril, the still faithful wife 
Had left her mother's grave, her fa- 
ther's door, 
To seek the wigwam of her chief once 
more. 

Down the white rapids like a sear leaf 

whirled. 
On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices 

hurled, 
Empty and broken, circled the canoe 
In the vexed pool below — but where 

was Weetamoo? 

VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN 

The Dark eye has left us, 

The Spring-bird has flown; 700 
On the pathway of spirits 
She wanders alone. 
The song of the wood-dove has died on 

our shore: 
Mat wonck kunna-moncc ! We hear 
it no more ! 

O dark water Spirit ! 

We cast on thy wave 
These furs which may never 
Hang over her grave; 
Bear down to the lost one the robes 

that she wore: 
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! We see 
her no more ! 

Of the strange land she walks in 
No Powah has told: 711 

It may burn witli the sunshine, 
Or freeze with the cold. 



40 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Let us give to our lost one the robes 

that she wore: 
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! We see 

her no more ! 

The path she is treading 
Shall soon be our own; 
Each gliding in shadow 
Unseen and alone ! 
In vain shall we call on the souls gone 
before: , 720 

Mat wonck kunna-monee ! They hear 
us no more! 

O mighty Sowanna ! 

Thy gateways unfold, 
From thy wigwam of sunset 
Lift curtains of gold ! 
Take home the poor Spirit whose jour- 
ney is o'er: 
Mat wonck kunna-monee ! We see 
her no more ! 

So sang the Children of the Leaves 

beside 
The broad, dark river's coldly flowing 

tide; 
Now low, now harsh, with sob-like 

pause and swell, 730 

On the high wind their voices rose and 

fell. 
Nature's wild music, — sounds of 

wind-swept trees, 
The scream of birds, the wailing of the 

breeze. 
The roar of waters, steady, deep, and 

strong, — 
Mingled and murmured in that fare- 
well song. 



BARCLAY OF URY 

Up the streets of Aberdeen, 
By the kirk and college green, 

Rode the Laird of Ury; 
Close behind him, close beside. 
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed. 

Pressed the mob in fury. 

Flouted him the drunken churl. 
Jeered at him the serving-girl, 

Prompt to please her master; 
And the Ijegging carlin, late i 

Fed and clothed at Ury's gate. 

Cursed him as he passed her. 



Yet, with calm and stately mien, 
Up the streets of Aberdeen 

Came he slowly riding; 
And, to all he saw and heard, 
Answering not with bitter word, 

Turning not for chiding. 

Came a troop with broadswords swing- 
ing, 

Bits and bridles sharply ringing, 20 
Loose and free and fro ward; 

Quoth the foremost, " Ride him down ! 

Push him ! prick him ! through the 
town 
Drive the Quaker coward !" 

But from out the thickening crowd 
Cried a sudden voice and loud: 

" Barclay ! Ho ! a Barclay !" 
And the old man at his side 
Saw a comrade, battle tried. 

Scarred and sunburned darkly; 

Who with ready weapon bare, 31 

Fronting to the troopers there. 

Cried aloud: "' God save us. 
Call ye coward him who stood 
Ankle deep in Liitzen's blood. 

With the brave Gustavus ?" 

" Nay, I do not need thy sword. 
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord; 

" Put it up, I pray thee: 
Passive to His holy will, 40 

Trust I in my Master still, 

Even though He slay me. 

"■ Pledges of thy love and faith. 
Proved on many a field of death. 

Not by me are needed." 
Marvelled much that henchman bold. 
That his laird, so stout of old. 

Now so meekly pleaded. 

"Woe 's the day !" he sadly said, 
With a slowly shaking head, so 

And a look of pity; 
"Ury's honest lord reviled. 
Mock of knave and sport of child. 

In his own good city ! 

"Speak the word, and, master mine. 
As we charged on Tilly's line, 
And his Walloon lancers. 
Smiting through their midst we'll 
teach 



THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA 



41 



Civil look and decent speech 

To these boyish prancers ! " 60 

" Marvel not, mine ancient friend, 
Like beginning, like the end," 

Quoth the Laird of Ury; 
" Is the sinful servant more 
Than his gracious Lord who bore 

Bonds and stripes in Jewry ? 

"Give me joy that in His name 
I can bear, with patient frame. 

All these vain ones offer; 
While for them He suffereth long, 70 
Shall I answer wrong with wrong. 

Scoffing with the scoffer ? 

" Happier I, with loss of all, 
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall, 

With few friends to greet me. 
Than when reeve and squire were seen, 
Riding out from Aberdeen, 

With bared heads to meet me. 

" When each goodwife, o'er and o'er, 
Blessed me as I passed her door; 80 

And the snooded daughter, 
Through her casement glancing down. 
Smiled on him who bore renown 

From red fields of slaughter. 

" Hard to feel the stranger's scoff. 
Hard the old friend's falling off, 

Hard to learn forgiving; 
But the Lord His own rewards, 
And His love with theirs accords. 

Warm and fresh and living. 90 

" Through this dark and stormy night 
Faith beholds a feeble light 

Up the blackness streaking; 
Knowing God's own time is best, 
In a patient hope I rest 

For the full day-breaking !" 

So the Laird of Ury said. 
Turning slow his horse's head 

Towards the Tolbooth prison, 
Where, through iron gates, he heard 
Poor disciples of the Word loi 

Preach of Christ arisen ! 

Not in vain, Confessor old, 
Unto us the tale is told 
Of thy day of trial; 
Every age on him who strays 



From its broad and beaten ways 
Pours its seven-fold vial. 

Happy he whose inward ear 

Angel comfortings can hear, no 

O'er the rabble's laughter; 
And while Hatred's fagots burn, 
Glimpses through the smoke discern 

Of the good hereafter. 

Knowing this, that never yet. 
Share of Truth was vainly set 

In the world's wide fallow; 
After hands shall sow the seed. 
After hands from hill and mead 

Reap the harvests yellow. 120 

Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, 
Must the moral pioneer 

From the Future borrow; 
Clothe the waste with dreams of 

grain. 
And, on midnight's sky of rain. 

Paint the golden morrow ! 



THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA 

Speak and tell us, our Ximena, look- 
ing northward far away. 

O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er 
the Mexican array. 

Who is losing ? who is winning ? are 
they far or come they near ? 

Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither 
rolls the storm we hear. 

" Down the hills of Angostura still the 

storm of battle rolls; 
Blood is flowing, men are dying; God 

have mercy on their souls ! " 
Who is losing ? who is winning ? 

'' Over hill and over plain, 
I see but smoke of cannon clouding 

through the mountain rain." 

Holy Mother ! keep our brothers ! 
Look, Ximena, look once more. 

" Still I see the fearful whirlwind roll- 
ing darkly as before, _ ic 

Bearing on, in strange confusion, 
friend and foeman, foot and 
horse. 

Like some wild and troubled torrent 
sweeping down its mountain 
course." 



42 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Look forth once more, Ximena ! " Ah ! 

the smoke has rolled away; 
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming 

down the ranks of gray. 
Hark ! that sudden blast of bugles ! 

there the troop of Minon 

wheels; 
There the Northern horses thunder, 

with the cannon at their heels. 

" Jesu, pity ! how it thickens ! now 
retreat and now advance ! 

Right against the blazing cannon 
shivers Peubla's charging lance ! 

Down they go, the brave young rid- 
ers ; horse and foot together fall ; 

Like a ploughshare in the fallow, 
through them ploughs the 
Northern ball." 20 

Nearer came the storm and nearer, 

rolling fast and frightful on ! 
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who 

has lost, and who has won ? 
''Alas ! alas ! I know not; friend and 

foe together fall, 
O'er the dying rush the living: pray, 

my sisters, for them all ! 

" Lo ! the wind the smoke is lifting. 

Blessed Mother, save my brain ! 
I can see the wounded crawling slowly 

out from heaps of slain. 
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; 

now they fall, and strive to rise; 
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, 

lest they die before our eyes ! 

" O my heart's love ! O my dear one ! 

lay thy poor head on my knee; 
Dost thou know the lips that kiss 

thee ? Canst thou hear me ? 

canst thou see ? 30 

O my husband, brave and gentle ! O 

my Bernal, look once more 
On the blessed cross before thee ! 

Mercy ! mercy ! all is o'er !" 

Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay 

thy dear one down to rest; 
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay 

the cross upon his breast; 
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and 

his funeral masses said; 
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the 

living ask thy aid. 



Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair 

and young, a soldier lay. 
Torn with shot and pierced with 

lances, bleeding slow his life 

away ; 
But, as tenderly before him the lorn 

Ximena knelt. 
She saw the Northern eagle shining on 

his pistol-belt. 40 

With a stifled cry of horror straight 
she turned away her head; 

With a sad and bitter feeling looked 
she back upon her dead; 

But she heard the youth's low moan- 
ing, and his struggling breath 
of pain. 

And she raised the cooling water to his 
parching lips again. 

Whispered low the dying soldier, 

pressed her hand and faintly 

smiled; 
Was that pitying face his mother's ? 

did she watch beside her 

child? 
All his stranger words with meaning 

her woman's heart supplied; 
With her kiss upon his forehead, 

" Mother ! " murmured he, and 

died ! 

" A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, 

who led thee forth. 
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, 

weeping, lonely, in the North ! " 
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as 

she laid him with her dead, 51 
And turned to soothe the living, and 

bind the wounds which bled. 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! 
" Like a cloud before the wind 

Rolls the battle down the mountains, 
leaving blood and death be- 
hind; 

Ah ! they plead in vain for mercy; in 
the dust the wounded strive; 

Hide your faces, holy angels ! O thou 
Christ of God, forgive !" 

Sink, O Night, among thy mountains ! 

let the cool, gray shadows 

fall; 
Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop 

thy curtain over all ! 



THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK 



43 




He 



knew the face of good St. Mark." 



Through the thickening winter twi- 
light, wide apart the battle 
rolled, 

In its sheath the sabre rested, and the 
cannon's lips grew cold. 



60 



But the noble Mexic women still their 
holy task pursued, 

Through that long, dark night of sor- 
row, worn and faint and lack- 
ing food. 

Over weak and suffering brothers, 
with a tender care they hung, 

And the dying foeman blessed them 
in a strange and Northern 
tongue. 

Not wholly lost, O Father ! is this evil 
world of ours; 

Upward, through its blood and ashes, 
spring afresh the Eden flowers; 

From its smoking hell of battle. Love 
and Pity send their prayer, 

And still thy white-winged angels ho- 
ver dimly in our air ! 



THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK 

The day is closing dark and cold. 
With roaring blast and sleety 
showers; 
And through the dusk the lilacs wear 
The bloom of snow, instead of 
flowers. 

I turn me from the gloom without, 
To ponder o'er a tale of old; 

A legend of the age of Faitli, 

By dreaming monk or abbess told 

On Tintoretto's canvas lives 

That fancy of a loving heart, 10 
In graceful lines and shapes of power, 

And hues immortal as his art. 

In Provence (so the story runs) 
There lived a lord, to whom, as 
slave, 
A peasant-boy of tendsr years 

The chance of trade or conquest 
gave. 



44 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Forth-looking from the castle tower, 
Beyond the hills with almonds dark, 

The straining eye could scarce discern 
The chapel of the good St. Mark. 20 

And there, when bitter word or fare 
The service of the youth repaid. 

By stealth, before that holy shrine, 
For grace to bear his wrong, he 
prayed. 

The steed stamped at the castle gate. 
The boar-hunt sounded on the hill; 

Why stayed the Baron from the chase. 
With looks so stern, and words so 
ill? 

"■' Go, find yon slave ! and let him 

learn, 

By scath of fire and strain of cord, 30 

How ill they speed who give dead 

saints 

The homage due their living lord ! " 

They bound him on the fearful rack. 
When, through the dungeon's 
vaulted dark. 
He saw the light of shining robes. 
And knew the face of good St. 
Mark. 

Then sank the iron rack apart, 

The cords released their cruel clasp. 

The pincers, with their teeth of fire, 
Fell broken from the torturer's 
grasp. 40 

And lo! before the Youth and Saint, 
Barred door and wall of stone gave 
way; 
And up from bondage and the night 
They passed to freedom and the 
day ! 

O dreaming monk ! thy tale is true; 

O painter ! true thy pencil's art; 
In tones of hope and prophecy, 

Ye whisper to my listening heart ! 

Unheard no burdened heart's appeal 
Moans up to God's inclining ear; 50 

Unheeded by His tender eye. 

Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear. 

For still the Lord alone is God 1 
The pomp and power of tyrant man 



Are scattered at His lightest breath, 
Like chaff before the winnower's 
fan. 

Not always shall the slave uplift 
His heavy hands to Heaven in vain. 

God's angel, like the good St. Mark, 
Comes shining down to break his 
chain ! 60 

O weary ones! ye may not see 

Your helpers in their downward 
flight; 
Nor hear the sound of silver wings 
Slow beating through the hush of 
night ! 

But not the less gray Dothan shone, 
With sunbright watchers bending 
low, 

That Fear's dim eye beheld alone 
The spear-heads of the Syrian foe. 

There are, who, like the Seer of old, 
Can see the helpers God has sent, 70 

And how life's rugged mountain-side 
Is white with many an angel tent ! 

They hear the heralds whom our Lord 
Sends down His pathway to prepare; 

And light, from others hidden, shines 
On their high place of faith and 
prayer. 

Let such, for earth's despairing ones, 
Hopeless, yet longing to be free. 

Breathe once again the Prophet's 
prayer : 
"Lord, ope their eyes, that they 



may see 



1" 



KATHLEEN 

O NoRAH, lay your basket down. 
And rest your weary hand. 

And come and hear me sing a song 
Of our old Ireland. 

There was a lord of Galaway, 

A mighty lord was he; 
And he did wed a second wife, 

A maid of low degree. 

But he was old, and she was young. 
And so, in evil spite, i 



KATHLEEN 



45 



She baked the black bread for his kin, 
And fed her own with white. 

She whipped the maids and starved 
the kern, 

And drove away the poor; 
'*Ah, woe is me !" the old lord said, 

" I rue my bargain sore !" 

This lord he had a daughter fair. 
Beloved of old and young, 

And nightly round the shealing-fires 
Of her the gleeman sung. 20 

"As sweet and good is young Kath- 
leen 

As Eve before her fall;" 
So sang the harper at the fair, . 

So harped he in the hall. 

'' Oh, come to me, my daughter dear ! 

Come sit upon my knee. 
For looking in your face, Kathleen, 

Your mother's own I see ! " 

He smoothed and smoothed her hair 
away, 

He kissed her forehead fair; 30 

" It is my darling Mary's brow, 

It is my darhng's hair !" 

Oh, then spake up the angry dame, 
"Get up, get up," quoth she, 

" I '11 sell ye over Ireland, 
I'll sell ye o'er the sea !" 

She clipped her glossy hair away, 
That none her rank might know. 

She took away her gown of silk. 
And gave her one of tow, 40 

And sent her down to Limerick town 

And to a seaman sold 
This daughter of an Irish lord 

For ten good pounds in gold. 

The lord he smote upon his breast, 
And tore his beard so gray; 

But he was old, and she was young. 
And so she had her way. 

Sure that same night the Banshee 
howled 

To fright the evil dame, so 

And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen, 

With funeral torches came. 



She watched them glancing through 
the trees. 

And glimmering down the hill; 
They crept before the dead- vault door. 

And there they all stood still ! 

" Get up, old man ! the wake-lights 

shine !" ^ 

"Ye murthering witch," quoth he, 

"So I'm rid of your tongue, I little 

care 

If they shine for you or me. 60 

" Oh, whoso brings my daughter l^ack, 
My gold and land shall have ! " 

Oh, then spake up his handsome page, 
" No gold nor land I crave ! 

" But give to me your daughter dear. 
Give sweet Kathleen to me. 

Be she on sea or be she on land, 
I'll bring her back to thee." 

"My daughter is a lady born, 

And you of low degree, 70 

But she shall be your bride the day 
You bring her back to me." 

He sailed east, he sailed west. 
And far and long sailed he. 

Until he came to Boston town, 
Across the great salt sea. 

" Oh, have 3'e seen the young Kathleen, 

The flower of Ireland ? 
Ye '11 know her by her eyes so blue. 

And by her snow-white hand !" 80 

Out spake an ancient man, "I know 
The maiden whom ye mean; 

I bought her of a Limerick man, 
And she is called Kathleen. 

" No skill hath she in household work. 
Her hands are soft and white. 

Yet well by loving looks and ways 
She doth her cost requite." 

So up they walked through Boston 
town, 

And met a maiden fair, 90 

A little basket on her arm 

So snowy-white and bare. 

" Come hither, child, and say hast thou 
This young man ever seen ?" 



46 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



They wept within each other's arms, 
The page and young Kathleen. 

"Oh give to me this darhng child, 
And take my purse of gold." 

" Nay, not by me," her master said, 
" Shall sweet Kathleen be sold. loo 

" We loved her in the place of one 
The Lord hath early ta'en; 

But, since her heart's in Ireland, 
We give her back again !" 

Oh, for that same the saints in heaven 
For his poor soul shall pray, 

And Mary Mother wash with tears 
His heresies away. 

Sure now they dwell in Ireland; 

As you go up Claremore no 

Ye '11 see their castle looking down 

The pleasant Galway shore. 

And the old lord's wife is dead and 
gone, 

And a happy man is he, 
For he sits beside his own Kathleen, 

With her darling on his knee. 



THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE 

Calm on the breast of Loch Maree 

A little isle reposes; 
A shadow woven of the oak 

And willow o'er it closes. 

Within, a Druid's mound is seen. 
Set round with stony warders; 

A fountain, gushing through the turf. 
Flows o'er its grassy borders. 

And whoso bathes therein his brow. 
With care or madness burning. 

Feels once again his healthful thought 
And sense of peace returning. 

O restless heart and fevered brain. 

Unquiet and unstable. 
That holy well of Loch Maree 

Is more than idle fable ! 

Life's changes vex, its discords stun. 
Its glaring sunshine blindeth, 

And Idlest is he who on his way 
That fount of healing findeth ! 



The shadows of a humbled will 
And contrite heart are o'er it; 

Go read its legend, "Trust in God," 
On Faith's white stones before it. 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS 

" I DO believe, and yet, in grief, 
I pray for help to unbelief; 
For needful strength aside to lay 
The daily cumberings of my way. 

"I'm sick at heart of craft and cant. 
Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant, 
Profession's smooth hypocrisies, 
And creeds of iron, and lives of ease. 

" I ponder o'er the sacred word, 
I read the record of our Lord; lo 

And, weak and troubled, envy them 
Who touched His seamless garment's 
hem; 

" Who saw the tears of love He wept 
Above the grave where Lazarus slept ; 
And heard, amidst the shadows dim 
Of Olivet, His evening hymn. 

" How blessed the swineherd's low 

estate, 
The beggar crouching at the gate. 
The leper loathly and abhorred. 
Whose eyes of flesh beheld tlie Lord! 20 

" O sacred soil His sandals pressed ! 
Sweet fountains of His noonday rest ! 
O light and air of Palestine, 
Impregnate with His life divine ! 

" Oh, bear me thither ! Let me look 
On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook; 
Kneel at Gethsemane, and by 
Gennesaret walk, before I die ! 

" Methinks this cold and northern 
night 29 

Would melt before that Orient light; 
And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain. 
My childhood's faith revive again !" 

So spake my friend, one autumn day, 
Where the still river slid away 
Beneath us, and above the brown 
Red curtains of the woods shut 
down. 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS 



47 



Then said I, — for I could not brook 
The mute appeaUng of his look, — 
" I too am weak, and faith is small, 
And blindness happeneth unto all. 40 

" Yet sometimes glimpses on my sight. 
Through present wrong, the eternal 

right; 
And, step by step, since time began, 
I see the steady gain of man ; 

"That all of good the past hath had 
Remains to make our own time glad, 
Our common daily life divine, 
And every land a Palestine. 

"Thou weariest of thy present state; 
What gain to thee time's holiest date? 
The doubter now perchance had been 
As High Priest or as Pilate then ! 52 

" What thought Chorazin's scribes ? 

What faith 
In Him had Nain and Nazareth ? 
Of the few followers whom He led 
One sold Him, — all forsook and fled. 

" O friend ! we need nor rock nor sand, 
Nor storied stream of Morning-Land; 
Tlie heavens are glassed in Merrimac, — 
What more could Jordan render back? 

"We lack but open eye and ear 61 
To find the Orient's marvels here; 
The still small voice in autumn's hush. 
Yon maple wood the burning bush. 

" For still the new transcends the old. 
In signs and tokens manifold; 
Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, 
With roots deep set in battle graves ! 

" Through the harsh noises of our day 
A low, sweet prelude finds its way; 70 
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds 

of fear, 
A light is breaking, calm and clear. 

" That song of Love, now low and far. 
Erelong shall swell from star to star ! 
That light, the breaking day, which tips 
The golden-spired Apocalypse !" 

Then, when my good friend shook his 

head, 
And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said: 



" Thou mind'st me of a story told 
In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold." 80 

And while the slanted sunbeams wove 
The shadows of the frost-stained 

grove, 
And, picturing all, the river ran 
O'er cloud and wood, I thus began: — 



In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood 
The Chapel of the Hermits stood; 
And thither, at the close of day, 
Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray. 

One, whose impetuous youth defied 
The storms of Baikal's wintry side, 90 
And mused and dreamed where tropic 

day 
Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay. 

His simple tale of love and woe 
All hearts had melted, high or low, — 
A blissful pain, a sweet distress. 
Immortal in its tenderness. 

Yet, while above his charmed page 
Beat quick the young heart of his age, 
He walked amidst the crowd unknown, 
A sorrowing old man, strange and 
lone. 100 

A homeless, troul)led age, — the gray 
Pale setting of a weary day; 
Too dull his ear for voice of praise, 
Too sadly worn his brow for bays. 

Pride, lust of power and glory, slept; 
Yet still his heart its young dream kept. 
And, wandering like the deluge-dove. 
Still sought the resting-place of love. 

And, mateless, childless, envied more 
The peasant's welcome from his door 
By smiling eyes at eventide, m 

Than kingly gifts or lettered pride. 

Until, in place of wife and child. 
All-pitying Nature on him smiled. 
And gave to him the golden keys 
To all her inmost sanctities. 

Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim ! 
She laid her great heart bare to him, 
Its loves and sweet accords ; — he saw 
The beauty of her perfect law. no 



48 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 




Rousseau 



The language of her signs he knew, 
What notes her cloudy clarion blew; 
The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes, 
The hymn of sunset's painted skies. 

And thus he seemed to hear the song 
Which swept, of old, the stars along; 
And to his eyes the earth once 

more 
Its fresh and primal beauty wore. 

Who sought with him, from summer 
air, 129 

And field and wood, a balm for care, 
And bathed in light of sunset skies 
His tortured nerves and weary 
eyes? 

His fame on all the winds had flown; 
His words had shaken crypt and 
throne; 



Like fire on camp and court and cell 
They dropped, and kindled as they 
fell. 

Beneath the pomps of state, below 
The mitred juggler's masque and 

show, 
A prophecy, a vague hope, ran 
His burning thought from man to 



man. 



140 



For peace or rest too well he saw 
The fraud of priests, the wrong of 

law. 
And felt how hard, between the two. 
Their breath of pain the millions drew. 

A prophet-utterance, strong and wild. 
The weakness of an unweaned child, 
A sun-bright hope for human-kind, 
And self-despair, in him combined. 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS 



49 



He loathed the false, yet lived not true 
To half the glorious truths he knew; i so 
The doubt, the discord, and the sin, 
He mourned without, he felt within. 

Untrod by him the path he showed. 
Sweet pictures on his easel glowed 
Of simple faith, and loves of home, 
And virtue's golden days to come. 

But weakness, shame, and folly made 
The foil to all his pen portrayed; 
Still, where his dreamy splendors 

shone. 
The shadow of himself was thrown. i6o 

Lord, what is man, whose thought, at 

times. 
Up to Thy sevenfold brightness 

climbs. 
While still his grosser instinct clings 
To earth, like other creeping things ! 

So rich in words, in acts so mean; 
So high, so low; chance-swung be- 
tween 
The foulness of the penal pit 
And Truth's clear sky, millennium-ht ! 

Vain, pride of star-lent genius ! — 

vain. 
Quick fancy and creative brain, 170 
Unblest by prayerful sacrifice. 
Absurdly great, or weakly wise ! 

Midst yearnings for a truer life, 
Without were fears, within was strife; 
And still his wayward act denied 
The perfect good for which he sighed. 

The love he sent forth void returned; 
The fame that crowned him scorched 

and burned. 
Burning, yet cold and drear and 

lone, — 
A fire-mount in a frozen zone ! iSo 

Like that the gray-haired sea-king 

passed, 
Seen southward from his sleety mast. 
About whose brows of changeless frost 
A wreath of flame the wild winds 

tossed. 

Far round the mournful beauty played 
Of lambent light and purple shade, 



Lost on the fixed and dumb despair 
Of frozen earth and sea and air ! 

A man apart, unknown, unloved 

By those whose wrongs his soul had 

moved, 190 

He bore the ban of Church and State, 
The good man's fear, the bigot's 

hate ! 

Forth from the city's noise and 

throng. 
Its pomp and shame, its sin and 

wrong. 
The twain that summer day had 

strayed 
To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade. 

To them the green fields and the 

wood 
Lent something of their quietude, 
And golden-tinted sunset seemed 
Prophetical of all they dreamed. 200 

The hermits from their simple cares 
The bell was calling home to prayers, 
And, listening to its sound, the twain 
Seemed lapped in childhood's trust 
again. 

Wide open stood the chapel door; 
A sweet old music, swelling o'er 
Low prayerful murmurs, issued 

thence, — 
The Litanies of Providence! 

Then Rousseau spake: "Where two 

or three 
In His name meet. He there will be!" 
And then, in silence, on their knees 211 
They sank beneath the chestnut-trees. 

As to the blind returning light, 
As daybreak to the Arctic night, 
Old faith revived; the doubts of years 
Dissolved in reverential tears. 

That gush of feeling overpast, 
"Ah me!" Bernardin sighed at last, 
" I would thy bitterest foes could see 
Thy heart as it is seen of me! 220 

"No church of God hast thou denied; 
Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside 
A bare and hollow counterfeit, 
Profaning the pure name of it! 



so 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



"With dry dead moss and marish weeds 
His fire the western herdsman feeds, 
And greener from the ashen plain 
The sweet spring grasses rise again. 

"Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind 
Disturb the solid sky behind; 230 

And through the cloud the red bolt 

rends 
The calm, still smile of Heaven de- 
scends! 

"Thus through the world, like bolt 

and blast, 
And scourging fire, thy words have 

passed. 
Clouds break, — the steadfast heavens 

remain; 
Weeds burn, — the ashes feed the 

grain! 

" But whoso strives with wrong may 

find 
Its touch pollute, its darkness blind; 
And learn, as latent fraud is shown 
In others' faith, to doubt his own. 240 

"With dream and falsehood, simple 

trust 
And pious hope we tread in dust; 
Lost the calm faith in goodness, — lost 
The baptism of the Pentecost! 

" Alas ! — the blows for error meant 
Too oft on truth itself are spent, 
As through the false and vile and base 
Looks forth her sad, rebuking face. 

" Not ours the Theban's charmed life; 
We come not scathless from the strife! 
The Python's coil about us clings, 251 
The trampled Hydra bites and stings! 

"Meanwhile, the sport of seeming 

chance. 
The plastic shapes of circumstance. 
What might have been we fondly 

guess. 
If earlier born, or tempted less. 

"And thou, in these wild, troubled 

days. 
Misjudged aUke in blame and praise, 
Unsought and imdeserved the same 
The skeptic's praise, the bigot's 

blame; — 260 



" I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been 
Among the highly favored men 
Who walked on earth with Fenelon, 
He would have owned thee as his son; 

"And, bright with wings of cherubim 

Visibly waving over him. 

Seen through his life, the Church had 

seemed 
All that its old confessors dreamed." 

"I would have been," Jean Jacques 

replied, 
"The humblest servant at his side, 270 
Obscure, unknown, content to see 
How beautiful man's life may be ! 

" Oh, more than thrice-blest rehc, 

more 
Than solemn rite or sacred lore, 
The holy life of one who trod 
The foot-marks of the Christ of God ! 

" Amidst a blinded world he saw 

The oneness of the Dual law; 

That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth 

began. 
And God was love through love of 

man, 280 

" He lived the Truth which reconciled 
The strong man Reason, Faith, the 

child ; 
In him belief and act were one, 
The homilies of duty done!" 

So speaking, through the twilight 

gray 
The two old pilgrims went their way. 
What seeds of life that day were 

sown. 
The heavenly watchers knew alone. 

Time passed, and Autumn came to 

fold 
Green Summer in her brown and gold; 
Time passed, and Winter's tears of 

snow 291 

Dropped on the grave-mound of 

Rousseau. 

"The tree remaineth where it fell. 
The pained on earth is pained in hell ! " 
So priestcraft from its altars cursed 
The mournful doubts its falsehood 
nursed. 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS 



51 



Ah ! well of old the Psalmist prayed, 
"Thy hand, not man's, on me be 

. laid !" 
Earth frowns below. Heaven weeps 

above, 
And man is hate, but God is love ! 300 

No Hermits now the wanderer sees. 
Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees; 
A morning dream, a tale that's told. 
The wave of change o'er all has rolled. 

Yet lives the lesson of that day; 
And from its twilight cool and gray 
Comes up a low, sad whisper, " Make 
The truth thine own, for truth's own 
sake. 

" Why wait to see in thy brief span 
Its perfect flower and fruit in man ? 
No saintly touch can save; no balm 311 
Of healing hath the martyr's palm. 

"Midst soulless forms, and false pre- 
tence 
Of spiritual pride and pampered sense, 
A voice saith, ' What is that to thee ? 
Be true thyself, and follow Me ! ' 

" In days when throne and altar heard 
The wanton's wish, the big6t's word, 
And pomp of state and ritual show 
Scarce hid the loathsome death be- 
low, — 320 

"Midst fawning priests and courtiers 

foul. 
The losel swarm of crown and cowl, 
White-robed walked Francois Fenelon, 
Stainless as Uriel in the sun! 

"Yet in his time the stake blazed 

red. 
The poor were eaten up like bread: 
Men knew him not; his garment's 

hem 
No healing virtue had for them. 

"Alas! no present saint we find; 329 
The white cymar gleams far behind, 
Revealed in outline vague, sublime. 
Through telescopic mists of time ! 

"Trust not in man with passing 

breath, 
But in the Lord, old Scripture saith; 



The truth which saves thou mayest 

not blend 
With false professor, faithless friend. 

" Search thine own heart. What 

paineth thee 
In others in thyself may be; 
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak; 
Be thou the true man thou dost seek ! 

" Where now with pain thou treadest, 
trod 341 

The whitest of the saints of God ! 
To sliow thee where their feet were set, 
The light which led them shineth yet. 

" The footprints of the life divine, 
Which marked their path, remain in 

thine; 
And that great Life, transfused in 

theirs. 
Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy 

prayers!" 

A lesson which I well may heed, 
A word of fitness to my need; 350 

So from that twilight cool and gray 
Still saith a voice, or seems to say. 

We rose, and slowly homeward turned, 
While down the west the sunset 

burned; 
And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide, 
And human forms seemed glorified. 

The village homes transfigured stood, 
And purple bluffs, whose belting 

wood 
Across the waters leaned to hold 
The yellow leaves like lamps of gold. 

Then spake my friend: "Thy words 
are true; 361 

Forever old, forever new. 

These home-seen splendors are the 
same 

Which over Eden's sunsets came. 

"To these bowed heavens let wood 

and hill 
Lift voiceless praise and anthem still; 
Fall, warm with blessing, over them, 
Light of the New Jerusalem ! 

" Flow on, sweet river, like the stream 
Of John's Apocalyptic dream ! 370 



52 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 




Strasburg 



This mapled ridge shall Horeb be, 
Yon green-banked lake our Galilee ! 

"Henceforth my heart shall sigh no 

more 
For olden time and holier shore; 
God's love and blessing, then and there, 
Are now and here and everywhere." 



TAULER 

Tauler, the preacher, walked, one 

autumn day. 
Without the walls of Strasburg, by the 

Rhine, 
Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life; 
As one who, wandering in a starless 

night. 
Feels momently the jar of unseen 

waves, 



And hears the thunder of an unknown 

sea. 
Breaking along an unimagined shore. 

And as he walked he prayed. Even 

the same 
Old prayer with which, for half a score 

of years, 
Morning, and noon, and evening, lip 

and heart lo 

Had groaned: "Have pity upon me. 

Lord ! 
Thou seest, while teaching others, I 

am blind. 
Send me a man who can direct my 

steps ! " 

Then, as he mused, he heard along 
his path 
A sound as of an old man's staff 
among 



TAULER 



53 



The dry, dead linden-leaves; and, 

looking up, 
He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, 

and old. 

''Peace be unto thee, father!" 

Tauler said, 
''God give thee a good day!" The 

old man raised 
Slowly his calm blue eyes. "I thank 

thee, son; 20 

But all my days are good, and none 

are ill." 

Wondering thereat, the preacher 

spake again. 
" God give thee happy life." The old 

man smiled, 
" I never am unhappy." 

Tauler laid 
His hand upon the stranger's coarse 

gray sleeve: 
"Tell me, O father, what thy strange 

words mean. 
Surely man's days are evil, and his life 
Sad as the grave it leads to." " Nay, 

my son, 
Our times are in God's hands, and all 

our days 
Are as our needs; for shadow as for 

sun, 30 

For cold as heat, for want as wealth, 

alike 
Our thanks are due, since that is best 

which is; 
And that which is not, sharing not His 

life. 
Is evil only as devoid of good. 
And for the happiness of which I spake, 
I find it in submission to His will, 
And calm trust in the holy Trinity 
Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Al- 
mighty Power." 

Silently wondering, for a little space. 
Stood the great preacher; then he 

spake as one 40 

Who, suddenly grappling with a 

haunting thought 
Which long has followed, whispering 

through the dark 
Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, 

into light* 
"What if God's will consign thee 

hence to Hell?" 



"Then," said the stranger, cheerily, 

" be it so. 
What Hell may be I know not; this I 

know, — 
I cannot lose the presence of the Lord. 
One arm, Humility, takes hold upon 
His dear Humanity; the other. Love, 
Clasps his Divinity. So where I go so 
He goes; and better fire- walled Hell 

with Him 
Than golden-gated Paradise without." 

Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A 

sudden light. 
Like the first ray which fell on chaos, 

clove 
Apart the shadow wherein he had 

walked 
Darkly at noon. And, as the strange 

old man 
Went his slow way, until his silver 

hair 
Set like the white moon where the hills 

of vine 
Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head 

and said: 
" My prayer is answered. God hath 

sent the man 60 

Long sought, to teach me, by his sim- 
ple trust, 
Wisdom the weary schoolmen never 

knew." 

So, entering with a changed and 
cheerful step 

The city gates, he saw, far down the 
street, 

A mighty shadow break the light of 
noon, 

Which tracing backward till its airy 
fines 

Hardened to stony plinths, he raised 
his eyes 

O'er broad fa9ade and lofty pediment. 

O'er architrave and frieze and sainted 
niche. 

Up the stone lace-work chiselled by 
the wise 70 

Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to 
where 

In the noon-briglitness the great Min- 
ster's tower. 

Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural 
crown. 

Rose like a visible prayer. " Be- 
hold!" he said, 



54 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



"The stranger's faith made plain be- 
fore mine eyes. 

As yonder tower outstretches to the 
eartli 

The dark triangle of its shade alone 

When the clear day is shining on its 
top, 

So, darkness in the pathway of Man's 
life 

Is but the shadow of God's provi- 
dence, 80 

By the great Sun of Wisdom cast 
thereon ; 

And what is dark below is light in 
Heaven." 

THE HERMIT OF THE 
THEBAID 

O STRONG, up welling prayers of faith, 
From inmost founts of life ye 
start, — 

The spirit's pulse, the vital breath 
Of soul and heart ! 

From pastoral toil, from traffic's din, 
Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad. 

Unheard of man, ye enter in 
The ear of God. 

Ye brook no forced and measured 

tasks, 
Nor weary rote, nor formal chains; 
The simple heart,, that freely asks 1 1 
In love, obtains. 

For man the living temple is: 
The mercy-seat and cherubim, 

And all the holy mysteries, 
He bears with him. 

And most avails the prayer of love. 
Which, wordless, shapes itself in 
deeds, 

And wearies Heaven for naught above 
Our common needs. 20 

Which brings to God's all-perfect will 
That trust of His undoul)ting child 

Whereby all seeming good and ill 
Are reconciled. 

And, seeking not for special signs 
Of favor, is content to fall 

Within the providence which shines 
And rains on all. 



Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned 
At noontime o'er the sacred word. 30 

Was it an angel or a fiend 
Whose voice he heard? 

It broke the desert's hush of awe, 
A human utterance, sweet and mild; 

And, looking up, the hermit saw 
A Uttle child. 

A child, with wonder-widened eyes, 
O'erawed and troubled by the sight 

Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies. 
And anchorite. 40 

"What dost thou here, poor man? 
No shade 
Of cool, green palms, nor grass, nor 
well, 
Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit 
said: 
" With God I dwell. 

"Alone with Him in this great calm, 
I live not by the outward sense; 

My Nile liis love, my sheltering palm 
His providence." 

The child gazed round him. "Does 
God Hve 
Here only? — where the desert's 
rim so 

Is green with corn, at morn and eve, 
We pray to Him. 

"My brother tills beside the Nile 
His little field; beneath the leaves 

My sisters sit and spin, the while 
My mother weaves. 

" And when the millet's ripe heads fall, 
And all the bean-field hangs in pod. 

My mother smiles, and says that all 
Are gifts from God. 60 

"And when to share our evening 
meal, 

She calls the stranger at the door. 
She says God fills the hands that deal 

Food to the poor." 

Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks 
Glistened the flow of human tears; 

"Dear Lord!" he said, "Thy angel 
speaks. 
Thy servant hears." 



MAUD MULLER 



55 



Within his arms the child he took, 
And thought of home and Hfe with 
men; 70 

And all his pilgrim feet forsook 
Returned again. 

The palmy shadows cool and long, 
The eyes that smiled through lavish 
locks. 
Home's cradle-hymn and harvest- 
song, 
And bleat of fiocks. 

"O child!" he said, "thou teachest 
me 

There is no place where God is not; 
That love will make, where'er it be, 

A holy spot." 80 

He rose from off the desert sand, 
And, leaning on his staff of thorn, 

Went with the young child hand in 
hand, 
Like night with morn. 

They crossed the desert's burning line. 
And heard the palm-tree's rustling 
fan, 

The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine, 
And voice of man. 

Unquestioning, his childish guide 
He followed, as the small hand led 

To where a woman, gentle-eyed, 91 
Her distaff fed. 

She rose, she clasped her truant boy, 
She thanked the stranger with her 
eyes; 

The hermit gazed in doubt and joy 
And dumb surprise. 

And lo ! — with sudden warmth and 
light 

A tender memory thrilled his frame; 
New-born, the world-lost anchorite 

A man became. loo 

" O sister of El Zara's race, 

Behold me ! — had we not one mo- 
ther?" 
She gazed into the stranger's face: 

" Thou art my brother ! " 

" O kin of blood ! Thy life of use 
And patient trust is more than mine; 



And wiser than the gray recluse 
This child of thine. 

" For, taught of him whom God hath 

sent, 

That toil is praise and love is 

prayer, no 

I come, life's cares and pains content 

With thee to share." 

Even as his foot the threshold crossed 
The hermit's better life began; 

Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost, 
And found a man ! 



MAUD MULLER 

Maud Muller on a summer's day 
Raked the meadow sweet with hay. 

Beneath her torn hat glowed the 

wealth 
Of simple beauty and rustic health. 

Singing, she wrought, and her merry 

glee 
The mock-bird echoed from his tree. 

But when she glanced to the far-off 

town, 
White from its hill-slope looking 

down. 

The sweet song died, and a vague un- 
rest 

And a nameless longing filled her 
breast, — 10 

A wish that she hardly dared to own. 
For something better than she had 
known. 

The Judge rode slowly down the lane. 
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. 

He drew his bridle in the shade 

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid, 

And asked a draught from the spring 

that flowed 
Through the meadow across the road. 

She stooped where the cool spring 

bubliled up, 
And filled for him her small tin cup, 20 



56 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Vn " 




" The young girl mused beside the well " 



And blushed as she gave it, looking 

down 
On her feet so bare, and her tattered 

gown. 

"Thanks!" said the Judge; "a 

sweeter draught 
From a fairer hand was never 

quaffed." 

He spoke of the grass and flowers and 

trees, 
Of the singing birds and the humming 

bees; 



Then talked of the haying, and won- 
dered whether 

The cloud in the west would bring 
foul weather. 

And Maud forgot her brier-torn 

gown. 

And her graceful ankles bare and 

brown; 30 

And listened, while a pleased sur- 
prise 

Looked from her long-lashed hazel 
eyes. 



MAUD MULLER 



57 



At last, like one who for delay 
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. 

Maud Muller looked and sighed: " Ah 

me! 
That I the Judge's bride might be ! 

" He would dress me up in silks so fine. 
And praise and toast me at his wine. 

" My father should wear a broadcloth 

coat; 
My brother should sail a painted boat. 

"I'd dress my mother so grand and 
gay, 41 

And the baby should have a new toy 
each day. 

" And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe 

the poor. 
And all should bless me who left our 

door." 

The Judge looked back as he climbed 

the hill. 
And saw Maud Muller standing still. 

" A form more fair, a face more sweet. 
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet. 

" And her modest answer and graceful 

air 
Show her wise and good as she is 

fair. 50 

"Would she were mine, and I to-day, 
Like her, a harvester of hay; 

" No doubtful balance of rights and 

wrongs, 
Nor weary lawyers with endless 

tongues, 

" But low of cattle and song of birds. 
And health and quiet and loving 
words." 

But he thought of his sisters, proud 

and cold, 
And his mother, vain of her rank and 

gold. 

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode 

on, 
And Maud was left in the field alone. 60 



But the lawyers smiled that after- 
noon. 

When he hummed in court an old 
love-tune; 

And the young girl mused beside the 

well 
Till the rain on the unraked clover 

fell. 

He wedded a wife of richest dower. 
Who lived for fashion, as he for 
power. 

Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright 

glow, 
He watched a picture come and go; 

And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes 
Looked out in tlieir innocent surprise. 

Oft, when the wine in his glass was 
red, 71 

He longed for the wayside well in- 
stead; 

And closed his eyes on his garnished 
rooms 

To dream of meadows and clover- 
blooms. 

And the proud man sighed, with a 

secret pain, 
''Ah, that I were free again! 

" Free as when I rode that day, 
Where the barefoot maiden raked her 
hay." 

She wedded a man unlearned and 

poor, 
And many children played round he' 

door. ? 

But care and sorrow, and childbirti 

pain. 
Left their traces on heart and brain. 

And oft, when the summer sun shone 

hot 
On the new-mown hay in the meadow 

lot, 

And slie heard tlie little spring ))rook 

fall 
Over the roadside, through the wall, 



58 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



In the shade of the apple-tree again 
She saw a rider draw his rein; 

And, gazing down with timid grace, 80 
She felt his pleased eyes read her face. 

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls 
Stretched away into stately halls; 

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, 
The tallow candle an astral burned. 

And for him who sat by the chimney 

lug, 
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and 

mug, 

A manly form at her side she saw, 
And joy was duty and love was law. 

Then she took up her burden of life 

again, 
Saying only, " It might have been. "100 

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, 
For rich repiner and household 
drudge ! 

God pity them both ! and pity us 
all, 

Who vainly the dreams of youth re- 
call. 

For of all sad words of tongue or 

pen, 
The saddest are these: "It might 

have been !" 

Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope 

lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes; 

And, in the hereafter, angels may 
Roll the stone from its grave away ! 1 10 



MARY GARVIN 

From the heart of Waumbek Methma, 
from the lake tliat never fails, 

Falls the Saco in the green lap of Con- 
way's intervales; 

There, in wild and virgin freshness, its 
waters foam and flow, 

As when Darljy Field first saw them, 
two hundred years ago. 



But, vexed in all its seaward course 

witli bridges, dams, and mills. 
How changed is Saco's stream, how 

lost its freedom of the hills. 
Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines, 

and stately Champernoon 
Heard on its banks the gray wolf's 

howl, the trumpet of the loon ! 

With smoking axle hot with speed, 

with steeds of fire and steam. 
Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday 

behind him like a dream. 10 
Still, from the hurrying train of Life, 

fly backward far and fast 
The milestones of the fathers, the 

landmarks of the past. 

But human hearts remain unchanged: 
the sorrow and the sin. 

The loves and hopes and fears of old, 
are to our own akin; 

And if, in tales our fathers told, the 
songs our mothers sung, 

Tradition wears a snowy beard, Ro- 
mance is always young. 

O sharp-lined man of traffic, on Saco's 

banks to-day ! 
O mill-girl watching late and long the 

shuttle's restless play ! 
Let, for tlie once, a listening ear the 

working hand beguile, 
And lend my old Provincial tale, as 

suits, a tear or smile ! 20 



The evening gun had sounded from 
gray Fort Mary's walls; 

Through the forest, like a wild beast, 
roared and plunged the Saco's 
falls. 

And westward on the sea-wind, that 
damp and gusty grew, 

Over cedars darkening inland the 
smokes of Spurwink blew. 

On the hearth of Farmer Garvin, 
blazed the crackling walnut log; 

Right and left sat dame and goodman, 
and between them lay the dog. 

Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, 
and beside him on her mat, 

Sitting drowsy in the firelight, winked 
and purred the mottled cat. 



MARY GARVIN 



59 



" Twenty years ! " said Goodman Gar- 
vin, speaking sadly, under 
breath. 

And his gray head slowly shaking, as 
one who speaks of death. 30 

The goodwife dropped her needles: 
"It is twenty years to-day. 

Since the Indians fell on Saco, and 
stole our child away." 

Then they sank into the silence, for 
each knew the other's thought. 

Of a great and common sorrow, and 
words were needed not. 



"Who knocks?" cried Good- 
man Garvin. The door 
was open thrown; 

On two strangers, man and 
maiden, cloaked and 
furred, the firelight 
shone. 

One with courteous gesture 
lifted the bearskin 
from his head; 

" Lives here Elkanah Gar- 
vin?" "I am he," the 
goodman said. 



"Sit ye down, and dry and 
warm ye, for the night 
is chill with rain." 

And the goodwife drew the settle, and 
stirred the fire amain. 40 

The maid unclasped her cloak-hood, 
the firehght glistened fair 

In her large, moist eyes, and over soft 
folds of dark brown hair. 

Dame Garvin looked upon her: " It is 

Mary's self I see ! 
Dear heart ! " she cried, " now tell me, 

has my child come back to 

me?" 

" My name indeed is Mary," said the 

stranger sobbing wild; 
" Will you be to me a mother ? I am 
. Mary Garvin's child ! 

'' She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on 

her dying day 
She bade my father take me to her 

kinsfolk far away. 



" And when the priest besought her to 
do me no such wrong. 

She said, 'May God forgive me! I 
have closed my heart too 
long. so 

" ' When I hid me from my father, and 
shut out my mother's call, 

I sinned against those dear ones, and 
the Father of us all. 

Christ's love rebukes no home-love, 
breaks no tie of kin apart; 
Better heresy in doctrine, than heresy 
of heart. 




" Each knew the other's thought " 

"'Tell me not the Church must cen- 
sure: she who wept the Cross 
beside 

Never made her own flesh strangers, 
nor the claims of blood denied; 

" ' And if she who wronged her par- 
ents, with her child atones to 
them. 

Earthly daughter, Heavenly Mother! 
thou at least wilt not con- 
demn ! ' 

" So, upon her death-bed lying, my 
blessed mother spake; 

As we come to do her bidding, so re- 
ceive us for her sake." 60 

" God be praised ! " said Goodwife Gar- 
vin, " He taketh, and He gives; 

He woundeth, but He healeth; in her 
child our daughter lives 1 " 



6o 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



"Amen!" the old man answered, as 
he brushed a tear away, 

And, kneeUng by his hearthstone, 
said, with reverence, " Let us 
pray." 

All its Oriental symbols, and its He- 
brew paraphrase, 

Warm with earnest life and feeling, rose 
his prayer of love and praise. 



The old man stroked the fair head 
that rested on his knee; 

" Your words, dear child," he an- 
swered, " are God's rebuke to 
me. 

" Creed and rite perchance may differ, 
yet our faith and hope be one. 

Let me be your father's father, let 
him be to me a son." 




WiiuFi, 



" As the preacher prayed, uprising, the aged couple stood, 
And the fair Canadian also, in her modest maidenhood " 



But he started at beholding, as he rose 

from off his knee, 
The stranger cross his forehead with 

the sign of Papistrie. 

" What is this?" cried Farmer Garvin. 

" Is an English Christian's home 
A chapel or a mass-house, that you 

make the sign of Rome?" 70 

Then the young girl knelt beside him, 
kissed his trembling hand, and 
cried: 

" Oh, forbear to chide my father; in 
that faith my mother died ! 

"On her wooden cross at Simcoe the 
dews and sunshine fall. 

As they fall on Spurwink's graveyard; 
and the dear God watches all ! " 



When the horn, on Sabbath morning, 
through the still and frosty air, 

From Spur wink. Pool, and Black 
Point, called to sermon and to 
prayer, 80 

To the goodly house of worship, 
where, in order due and fit, 

As by public vote directed, classed 
and ranked the people sit; 

Mistress first and goodwife after, 
clerkly squire before the clown, 

From the brave coat, lace-embroid- 
ered, to the gray frock, shad- 
ing down; 

From the pulpit read the preacher, 
" Goodman Garvin and his 
wife 



THE RANGER 



6i 



Fain would thank the Lord, whose 
kindness has followed them 
through life, 

"For the great and crowning mercy, 

that their daughter, from the 

wild, 
Where she rests (they hope in God's 

peace), has sent to them her 

child; 

" And the prayers of all God's people 
they ask, that they may prove 

Not unworthy, through their weak- 
ness, of such special proof of 
love." go 

As the preacher prayed, uprising, the 

aged couple stood. 
And the fair Canadian also, in her 

modest maidenhood. 

Thought the elders, grave and doubt- 
ing, "She is Papist born and 
bred;" 

Thought the young men, " 'T is an 
angel in Mary Garvin's stead ! " 



THE RANGER 

Robert Rawlin ! — Frosts were fall- 
ing 
When the ranger's horn was calhng 

Through the woods to Canada. 
Gone the winter's sleet and snowing, 
Gone the spring-time's bud and blow- 
ing, 
Gone the summer's harvest mow- 
ing. 
And again the fields are gray. 
Yet away, he's away ! 
Faint and fainter hope is growing 
In the hearts that mourn his stay. lo 

Where the lion, crouching high on 
Abraham's rock with teeth of iron. 

Glares o'er wood and wave away. 
Faintly thence, as pines far sighing. 
Or as thunder spent and dying. 
Come the challenge and replying. 

Come the sounds of flight and 
fray. 

Well-a-day ! Hope and pray ! 
Some are living, some are lying 

In their red graves far away. 20 



Straggling rangers, worn with dan- 
gers. 
Homeward faring, weary strangers 

Pass the farm-gate on their way; 
Tidings of the dead and living, 
Forest march and ambush, giving. 
Till the maidens leave their weaving, 

And the lads forget their play. 

" Still away, still away ! " 
Sighs a sad one, sick with grieving, 

" Why does Robert still delay ! " 30 

Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer. 
Does the golden-locked fruit bearer 

Through his painted woodlands 
stray. 
Than where hillside oaks and beeches 
Overlook the long, blue reaches. 
Silver coves and pebbled beaches. 

And green isles of Casco Bay; 

Nowhere day, for delay. 
With a tenderer look beseeches, 

" Let me with my charmed earth 
stay." 40 

On the grain-lands of the mainlands 
Stands the serried corn like train- 
bands. 

Plume and pennon rustling gay; 
Out at sea, the islands wooded. 
Silver birches, golden-hooded, 
Set with maples, crimson-blooded. 

White sea-foam and sand-hills gray. 

Stretch away, far away. 
Dim and dreamy, over-brooded 

By the hazy autumn day. so 

Gayly chattering to the clattering 
Of the brown nuts downward patter- 
ing, 

Leap the squirrels, red and gray. 
On the grass-land, on the fallow. 
Drop the apples, red and yellow; 
Drop the russet pears and mellow. 

Drop the red leaves all the day. 

And away, swift away, 
Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow 

Chasing, weave their web of play. 60 

"Martha Mason, Martha Mason, 
Prithee tell us of the reason 

Why you mope at home to-day: 
Surely siniling is not sinning; 
Leave your quilling, leave your spm- 

ning; 
What is all your store of hnen, 



62 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



If your heart is never gay ? 
Come away, come away ! 
Never yet did sad beginning 

Make the task of Hfe a play." 70 

Overbending till she's blending 
With the flaxen skein she's tending 

Pale brown tresses smoothed away 
From her face of patient sorrow, 
Sits she, seeking but to borrow, 
From the trembling liope of morrow, 

Solace for the weary day. 

"Go your way, laugh and play; 
Unto Him who heeds the sparrow 

And the lily, let me pray." 80 

" With our rally rings the valley, — 
Join us!" cried the blue-eyed Nelly; 

"Join us!" cried the laughing 
May, 
" To the beach we all are going, 
And, to save the task of rowing. 
West by north the wind is blowing. 

Blowing briskly down the bay ! 

Come away, come away ! 
Time and tide are swiftly flowing, 

Let us take them while we may ! 90 

" Never tell us that you '11 fail us. 
Where the purple beach-plum mel- 
lows 

On the bluffs so wild and gray. 
Hasten, for the oars are falling; 
Hark, our merry mates are calling; 
Time it is that we were all in, 

Singing tideward down the bay!" 

"Nay, nay, let me stay; 
Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin 

Is my heart," she said, " to-day. "100 

"Vain your caUing for Rob Rawlin! 
Some red squaw his moose-meat's 
broiling. 

Or some French lass, singing gay; 
Just forget as he's forgetting; 
What avails a life of fretting ? 
If some stars must needs be setting. 

Others rise as good as they." 

"Cease, I pray; go your way!" 
Martha cries, her eyelids wetting; 

" Foul and false the words you 
say!" no 

" Martha Mason, hear to reason ! 
Prithee, put a kinder face on !" 
"Cease to vex me," did she say; 



" Better at his side be lying. 

With the mournful pine-trees sigh- 

And the wild birds o'er us crying. 
Than to doubt like mine a prey; 
While away, far away. 

Turns my heart, forever trying 

Some new hope for each new day. 120 

"When tlie shadows veil the mea- 
dows. 
And the sunset's golden ladders 

Sink from twilight's walls of gray, — 
From the window of my dreaming, 
I can see his sickle gleaming. 
Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming 

Down the locust-shaded way; 

But away, swift away, 
Fades the fond, delusive seeming. 

And I kneel again to pray. 130 

"When the growing dawn is show- 
ing. 
And the barn-yard cock is crowing, 

And the horned moon pales away: 
From a dream of him awaking. 
Every sound my heart is making 
Seems a footstep of his taking; 

Then I hush the thought, and say, 

' Nay, nay, he 's away ! ' 
Ah ! my heart, my heart is breaking 

For the dear one far away." 140 

I^ook up, Martha ! worn and swarthy. 
Glows a face of manhood worthy : 

"Robert!" "Martha!" all they 
say. 
O'er went wheel and reel together. 
Little cared the owner Whither; 
Heart of lead is heart of feather, 

Noon of night is noon of day ! 

Come away, come away ! 
When such lovers meet each other. 

Why should prying idlers stay ? 150 

Quench the timber's fallen embers. 
Quench the red leaves in Decem- 
ber's 

Hoary rime and chilly spray. 
But the hearth shall kindle clearer. 
Household welcomes sound sincerer, 
Heart to loving heart draw nearer. 

When the bridal bells shall say : 

" Hope and pray, trust alway; 
Life is sweeter, love is dearer. 

For the trial and delay !" 160 



THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN 



63 




" The white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann " 



THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN 

From the hills of home forth looking, 
far beneath the tent-like span 

Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the 
headland of Cape Ann. 

Well I know its coves and beaches to 
the ebb-tide glimmering down. 

And the white-walled hamlet children 
of its ancient fishing-town. 

Long has passed the summer morning, 

and its memory waxes old. 
When along yon breezy headlands 

with a pleasant friend I strolled. 
Ah ! the autumn sun is shining, and 

the ocean wind blows cool, 
And the golden-rod and aster bloom 

around thy grave, Rantoul ! 

With the memory of that morning by 

the summer sea I blend 
A wild and wondrous story, by the 

younger Mather penned, 10 

In that quaint Magnalia Christi, with 

all strange and marvellous 

things. 
Heaped up huge and undigested, like 

the chaos Ovid sings. 



Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of 
the dual life of old. 

Inward, grand with awe and rever- 
ence; outward, mean and 
coarse and cold; 

Gleams of mystic beauty playing over 
dull and vulgar clay, 

Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a 
web of hodden gray. 

The great eventful Present hides the 

Past; but through the din 
Of its loud life hints and echoes from 

the life behind steal in; 
And the lore of home and fireside, and 

the legendary rhyme, 
Make the task of duty lighter which 

the true man owes his time. 20 

So, with something of the feeling 
which the Covenanter knew. 

When with pious chisel wandering 
Scotland's moorland grave- 
yards through, 

From the graves of old traditions I 
part the blackberry-vines, 

Wipe the moss from off the head- 
stones, and retouch the faded 
lines. 



64 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Where the sea-waves back and forward, 

hoarse with rolHng pebbles ran, 
The garrison-house stood watching on 

the gray rocks of Cape Ann; 
On its windy site uphfting gabled roof 

and pahsade, 
And rough walls of unhewn timber 

with the moonlight overlaid. 

On his slow round walked the sentry, 
south and eastward looking 
forth 

O'er a rude and broken coast-line, 
white with breakers stretching 
north, — 30 

Wood and rock and gleaming sand- 
drift, jagged capes, with bush 
and tree. 

Leaning inland from the smiting of 
the wild and gusty sea. 

Before the deep-mouthed chimney, 

dimly lit by dying brands, 
Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with 

their muskets in their hands; 
On the rough-hewn oaken table the 

venison haunch was shared. 
And the pewter tankard circled slowly 

round from beard to beard. 

Long they sat and talked together, — 

talked of wizards Satan-sold; 
Of all ghostly sights and noises, — 

signs and wonders manifold; 
Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the 

dead men in her shrouds. 
Sailing sheer above the water, in the 

loom of morning clouds; 40 

Of the marvellous valley hidden in the 

depths of Gloucester woods. 
Full of plants that love the summer, 

— blooms of warmer latitudes; 
Where the Arctic birch is braided by 

the tropic's flowery vines, 
And the white magnolia-blossoms star 

the twilight of the pines ! 

But their voices sank yet lower, sank 

to husky tones of fear. 
As they spake of present tokens of the 

powers of evil near; — 
Of a spectral host, defying stroke of 

steel and aim of gun; 
Never yet was ball to slay them in the 

mould of mortals run ! 



Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp- 
locks, from the midnight wood 
they came, — 

Thrice around the block-house march- 
ing, met, unharmed, its volley 
flame; so 

Then, with mocking laugh and ges- 
ture, sunk in earth or lost in 
air, 

All the ghostly wonder vanished, and 
the moonlit sands lay bare. 

Midnight came; from out the forest 

moved a dusky mass that soon 
Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, 

grimly marching in the moon. 
" Ghosts or witches," said the captain, 

"thus I foil the Evil One!" 
And he rammed a silver button, from 

his doublet, down his gun. 

Once again the spectral horror moved 

the guarded wall about; 
Once again the levelled muskets 

through the palisades flashed 

out, 
With that deadly aim the squirrel on 

his tree-top might not shun. 
Nor the beach-bird seaward flying 

with his slant wing to the 



sun. 



60 



Like the idle rain of summer sped the 

harmless shower of lead. 
With a laugh of fierce derision, once 

again the phantoms fled; 
Once again, without a shadow on the 

sands the moonlight lay, 
And the white smoke curling through 

it drifted slowly down the 

bay! 

" God preserve us ! " said the captain; 

"never mortal foes were there; 
They have vanished with their leader. 

Prince and Power of the air ! 
Lay aside your useless weapons; skill 

and prowess naught avail; 
They who do the Devil's service wear 

their master's coat of mail!" 

So the night grew near to cock-crow, 
when again a warning call 

Roused the score of weary soldiers 
watching round the dusky 
hall : 70 



THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS 



6S 



And they looked to flint and priming, 

and they longed for break of 

day; 
But the captain closed his Bible: 

"Let us cease from man, and 

pray!" 

To the men who went before us, all the 
unseen powers seemed near, 

And their steadfast strength of cour- 
age struck its roots in holy fear. 

Every hand forsook the musket, every 
head was bowed and bare, 

Every stout knee pressed the flag- 
stones, as the captain led in 
prayer. 

Ceased thereat the mystic marching of 
the spectres round the wall. 

But a sound abhorred, unearthly, 
smote the ears and hearts of 
all, — 

Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish ! 
Never after mortal man 

Saw the ghostly leaguers marching 
round the block-house of Cape 
Ann. 80 

So to us who walk in summer through 

the cool and sea-blown town, 
From the childhood of its people 

comes the solemn legend down. 
Not in vain the ancient fiction, in 

whose moral lives the youth 
And the fitness and the freshness of an 

undecaying truth. 

Soon or late to all our dwellings come 
the spectres of the mind, 

Doubts and fears and dread forebod- 
ings, in the darkness undefined; 

Round us throng the grim projections 
of the heart and of the brain, 

And our pride of strength is weakness, 
and the cunning hand is vain. 

In the dark we cry like children; and 
no answer from on high 

Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, 
and no white wings downward 
fly ; 90 

But the heavenly help we pray for 
comes to faith, and not to sight, 

And our prayers themselves drive 
backward all the spirits of the 
night I 



THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS 

Tritemius of Herl)ipolis, one day, 
While kneeling at the altar's foot to 

pray 
Alone with God, as was his pious 

choice. 
Heard from without a miserable voice, 
A sound which seemed of all sad things 

to tell. 
As of a lost soul crying out of hell. 

Thereat the Abbot paused; the chain 

whereby 
His thoughts went upward broken by 

that cry; 
And, looking from the casement, saw 

below 
A wretched woman, with gray hair 

a-flow. 
And withered hands held up to him, 

who cried 
For alms as one who might not be 

denied. 

She cried, " For the dear love of Him 
who gave 

His life for ours, my child from bond- 
age save, — 

My beautiful, brave first-born, chained 
with slaves 

In the Moor's galley, where the sun- 
smit waves 

Lap the white walls of Tunis!" — 
"What I can 

I give," Tritemius said, "my pray- 



ers. 



O man 



Of God ! " she cried, for grief had 
made her bold, 

"Mock me not thus; I ask not pray- 
ers, but gold. 

Words will not serve me, alms alone 
suffice; 

Even while I speak perchance my 
first-born dies." 

" Woman ! " — Tritemius answered, — 

" from our door 
None go unfed, hence are we always 

poor; 
A single soldo is our only store. 
Thou hast our prayers; — what can 

we give thee more?" 

"Give me," she said, "the silver 

candlesticks 
On either side of the great crucifix. 



66 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



God well may spare them on His er- 
rands sped, 

Or He can give you golden ones in- 
stead." 



Then spake Tritemius, " Even as thy 
word, 

Woman, so be it ! (Our most gracious 
Lord, 

Who loveth mercy more than sacri- 
fice. 

Pardon me if a human soul I prize 

Above the gifts upon his altar piled !) 

Take what thou askest, and redeem 
thy child." 

But his hand trembled as the holy 
alms 

He placed within the beggar's eager 
palms; 

And as she vanished down the linden 
shade. 

He bowed his head and for forgive- 
ness prayed. 

So the day passed, and when the twi- 
light came 

He woke to find the chapel all aflame, 

And, dumb with grateful wonder, to 
behold 

Upon the altar candlesticks of gold ! 



SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE 

Of all the rides since the birth of time, 
Told in story or sung in rhyme, — 
On Apuleius's Golden Ass, 
Or one-eyed Calender's horse of brass. 
Witch astride of a human back, 
Islam's prophet on Al-Borak, — 
The strangest ride that ever was sped 
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead ! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in 
a cart lo 

By the women of Marblehead ! 

Body of turkey, head of owl, 
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl. 
Feathered and ruffled in every part. 
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. 
Scores of women, old and young, 
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue. 
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, 
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain : 



"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 
horrt, 20 

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a 
corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! " 

Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips. 
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, 
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase 
Bacchus round some antique vase. 
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, 
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair. 
With conch-shells blowing and fish- 
horns' twang. 
Over and over the Maenads sang: 30 
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 

horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a 
corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead!" 

Small pity for him ! — He sailed away 
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay, — 
Sailed away from a sinking wreck. 
With his own town's-people on her 

deck ! 
"Lay by! lay by!" they called to 

him. 
Back he answered, " Sink or swim ! 
Brag of your catch of fish again ! " 40 
And off he sailed through the fog and 

rain! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. 
Tarred and feathered and carried in 

a cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur 
That wreck shall lie forevermore. 
Mother and sister, wife and maid, 
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead 
Over the moaning and rainy sea, — 
Looked for the coming that might not 

be! so 

What did the winds and the sea-birds 

say 
Of the cruel captain who sailed 

away ? — 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard 

heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in 

a cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Through the street, on either side, 
Up flew windows, doors swung wide; 



SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE 



67 




" Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! " 



Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives 

gray, 
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray. 
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound, 60 
Hulks of old sailors run aground, 
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane. 
And cracked with curses the hoarse 
refrain : 
''Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 

horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a 
corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! " 

Sweetly along the Salem road 
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. 
Little the wicked skipper knew 
Of the fields so green and the sky so 
blue. 70 

Riding there in his sorry trim, 
Like an Indian idol glum and grim, 



Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear 
Of voices shouting, far and near: 
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 

horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a 
corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead!" 

"Hear me, neighbors!" at last he 

cried, — 
" What to me is this noisy ride ? 
What is the shame that clothes the 

skin 80 

To the nameless horror that lives 

within ? 
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, 
And hear a cry from a reefing deck! 
Hate me and curse me, — I only 

dread 
The hand of God and the face of the 

dead!" 



68 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard 

heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in 

a cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea 
Said, " God has touched him ! why 

should we!" oo 

Said an old wife mourning her only 

son, 
" Cut the rogue's tether and let him 

run!" 
So with soft relentings and rude 

excuse, 
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him 

loose. 
And gave him a cloak to hide him in, 
And left him alone with his shame and 

sin. 
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard 

heart. 
Tarred and feathered and carried in 

a cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 



THE SYCAMORES 

In the outskirts of the village. 
On the river's winding shores. 

Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand the ancient sycamores. 

One long century hath been numbered, 
And another half-way told. 

Since the rustic Irish gleeman 

Broke for them the virgin mould. 

Deftly set to Celtic music. 

At his violin's sound they grew, to 
Through the moonlit eves of summer. 

Making Amphion's fable true. 

Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant ! 

Pass in jerkin green along, 
With thy eyes brim full of laughter. 

And thy mouth as full of song. 

Pioneer of Erin's outcasts. 
With his fiddle and his pack; 

Little dreamed the village Saxons 
Of the myriads at his back. 20 

How he wrought with spade and fiddle. 
Delved by day and sang by night. 



With a hand that never wearied. 
And a heart forever light, — 

Still the gay tradition mingles 
With a record grave and drear. 

Like the rollic air of Cluny 

With the solemn march of Mear. 

When the box-tree, white with blos- 
soms. 
Made the sweet May woodlands 
glad, 30 

And the Aronia by the river 
Lighted up the swarming shad, 

And the bulging nets swept shore- 
ward. 

With their silver-sided haul. 
Midst the shouts of dripping fishers. 

He was merriest of them all. 

When, among the jovial buskers 
Love stole in at Labor's side. 

With the lusty airs of England 

Soft his Celtic measures vied. 40 

Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake, 
And the merry fair's carouse; 

Of the wild Red Fox of Erin 
And the Woman of Three Cows, 

By the blazing hearths of winter, 
Pleasant seemed his simple tales. 

Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends 
And the mountain myths of Wales. 

How the souls in Purgatory 

Scraml:)led up from fate forlorn, 50 
On St. Keven's sackcloth ladder. 

Slyly hitched to Satan's horn. 

Of the fiddler who at Tara 

Played all night to ghosts of kings; 
Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies 

Dancing in their moorland rings ! 

Jolliest of our birds of singing. 
Best he loved the Bob-o-link. 

"Hush!" he'd say, "the tipsy 
fairies ! 
Hear the little folks in drink ! " 60 

Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle. 
Singing through the ancient town. 

Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant, 
Hath Tradition handed down. 



THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW 



69 



Not a stone his grave discloses; 

But if yet his spirit walks, 
'T is beneath the trees he planted, 

And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks. 

Green memorials of the gleeman ! 

Linking still the river-shores, 70 
With their shadows cast by sunset. 

Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores ! 

When the Father of his Country 
Through the north-land riding 
came. 
And the roofs were starred with ban- 
ners. 
And the steeples rang acclaim, — 

When each war-scarred Continental, 
Leaving smithy, mill, and farm. 

Waved his rusted sword in welcome, 79 
And shot off his old king's-arm, — 

Slowly passed that august Presence 
Down the thronged and shouting 
street ; 

Village girls as white as angels 
Scattering flowers around his feet. 

Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow 
Deepest fell, his rein he drew: 

On his stately head, uncovered. 
Cool and soft the west-wind blew. 

And he stood up in his stirrups. 

Looking up and looking down 0° 

On the hills of Gold and Silver 

Rimming round the little town, — 

On the river, full of sunshine. 
To the lap of greenest vales 

Winding down from wooded head- 
lands. 
Willow-skirted, white with sails. 

And he said, the landscape sweeping 
Slowly with his ungloved hand, 

" I have seen no prospect fairer 
In this goodly Eastern land." 100 

Then the bugles of his escort 
Stirred to life the cavalcade: 

And that head, so bare and stately. 
Vanished down the depths of shade. 

Ever since, in town and farm-house, 
liife has had its ebb and flow; 



Thrice hath passed the human har- 
vest 
To its garner green and low. 

But the trees the gleeman planted. 
Through the changes, changeless 
stand; no 

As the marble calm of Tadmor 
Mocks the desert's shifting sand. 

Still the level moon at rising 
Silvers o'er each stately shaft; 

Still beneath them, half in shadow. 
Singing, glides the pleasure craft; 

Still beneath them, arm-enfolded, 
Love and Youth together stray; 

While, as heart to heart beats faster, 
More and more their feet delay. 120 

Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar, 
On the open hillside wrought, 

Singing, as he drew his stitches. 
Songs his German masters taught. 

Singing, with his gray hair floating 
Eound his rosy ample face, — 

Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen 
Stitch and hammer in his place. 

All the pastoral lanes so grassy 

Now are Traffic's dusty streets; 130 

From the village, grown a city, 
Fast the rural grace retreats. 

But, still green, and tall, and stately, 
On the river's winding shores. 

Stand the Occidental plane-trees. 
Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores. 



THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW 

Pipes of the misty moorlands. 

Voice of the glens and hills; 
The droning of the torrents. 

The treble of the rills ! 
Not the braes of bloom and heather, 

Nor the mountains dark with rain, 
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, 

Have heard your sweetest strain ! 

Dear to the Lowland reaper, 

And plaided mountaineer, 10 

To the cottage and the castle 
The Scottish pipes are dear : — 



70 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch 
O'er mountain, locli, and glade; 

But the sweetest of all music 
The pipes at Lucknow played. 

Day by day the Indian tiger 

Louder yelled, and nearer crept; 
Round and round the jungle-serpent 

Near and nearer circles swept. 20 
" Pray for rescue, wives and mothers, — 

Pray to-day !" the soldier said; 
" To-morrow, death 's between us 

And the wrong and shame we 
dread." 

Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, 

Till their hope became despair; 
And the sobs of low bewailing 

Filled the pauses of their prayer. 
Then up spake a Scottish maiden. 

With her ear unto the ground: 30 
" Dinna ye hear it ? — dinna ye hear 
it? 

The pipes o' Havelock sound ! " 

Hushed the wounded man his groan- 
ing; 

Hushed the wife her little ones; 
Alone they heard the drum-roll 

And the roar of Sepoy guns. 
But to sounds of home and child- 
hood 

The Highland ear was true; — ■ 
As her mother's cradle-crooning 

The mountain pipes she knew. 40 

Like the march of soundless music 

Through the vision of the seer. 
More of feeling than of hearing. 

Of the heart than of the ear, 
She knew the droning pibroch. 

She knew the Campbell's call: 
" Hark ! hear ye no MacGregor's, 

The grandest o' them all ! " 

Oh, they listened, dumb and breath- 
less. 
And they caught the sound at 
last; so 

Faint and far beyond the Goomtee 

Rose and fell the piper's blast ! 
Then a burst of wild thanksgiving 

Mingled woman's voice and man's; 
" God be praised ! — the march of 
Havelock ! 
The piping of the clans!" 



Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, 

Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, 
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call. 

Stinging all the air to life. 60 

But when the far-off dust-cloud 

To plaided legions grew. 
Full tenderly and blithesomely 

The pipes of rescue blew ! 

Round the silver domes of Luck- 
now, 

Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, 
Breathed the air to Britons dearest, 

The air of Auld Lang Syne. 
O'er the cruel roll of war-drums 

Rose that sweet and homelike 
strain; 70 

And the tartan clove the turban, 

As the Goomtee cleaves the plain, 

Dear to the corn-land reaper 

And plaided mountaineer, — 
To the cottage and the castle 

The piper's song is dear. 
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch 

O'er mountain, glen, and glade; 
But the sweetest of all music 

The Pipes at Lucknow played ! 80 



TELLING THE BEES 

Here is the place; right over the hill 

Runs the path I took; 
You can see the gap in the old wall 
still, 
And the stepping-stones in the shal- 
low brook. 

There is the house, with the gate red- 
barred. 
And the poplars tall; 
And the barn's brown length, and the 
cattle-yard, 
And the white horns tossing above 
the wall. 

There are the beehives ranged in the 
sun; 
And down by the brink 10 

Of the brook are her poor flowers, 
weed-o'errun. 
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes 
Heavy and slow; 



TELLING THE BEES 



7^ 




" stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence ! 
Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! "' 



And the same rose blows, and the 
same sun glows, 
And the same brook sings of a year 
ago. 

There's the same sweet clover-smell 

in the breeze; 

And the June sun warm 

Tangles his wings of fire in the trees. 

Setting, as then, over Fernside 

farm. 20 



I mind me how with a lover's 
care 
From my Sunday coat 
I brushed oif the burrs, and smoothed 
my hair. 
And cooled at the brookside my 
brow and throat. 

Since we parted, a month had 
passed, — 
To love, a year; 



72 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Down through the beeches I looked at 
last 
On the little red gate and the well- 
sweep near. 

I can see it all now, — the slantwise 
rain 
Of light through the leaves, 30 

The sundown's blaze on her window- 
pane. 
The bloom of her roses under the 
eaves. 

Just the same as a month before, — 

The house and the trees, 
The barn's brown gable, the vine by 
the door, — 
Nothing changed but the hives of 
bees. 

Before them, under the garden wall, 

Forward and back. 
Went drearily singing the chore-girl 
small, 
Draping each hive with a. shred of 
black. 40 

Trembling, I listened: the summer 
sun 
Had the chill of snow; 
For I knew she was telling the bees of 
one 
Gone on the journey we all must 
go! 



Then I said to myself, "My Mary 
weeps 
For the dead to-da}^: 
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps 
The fret and the pain of his age 
away." 

But her dog whined low; on the door- 
way sill, 
With his cane to his chin, so 

The old man sat; and the chore-girl 
still 
Sung to the bees stealing out and 
in. 

And the song she was singing ever 
since 
In my ear sounds on : — 
"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not 
hence ! 
Mistress Mary is dead and gone!" 



THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON 
AVERY 

When the reaper's task was ended, 

and the summe- wearing late, 
Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, 

with his wife and children 

eight. 
Dropping down the river-harbor in 

the shallop "Watch and 

Wait." 

Pleasantly lay the clearings in the 
mellow summer-morn. 

With the newly planted orchards 
dropping their fruits first- 
born. 

And the home-roofs like brown is- 
lands amid a sea of corn. 

Broad meadows reached out seaward 
the tided creeks between. 

And hills rolled wave-like inland, with 
oaks and walnuts green; — ■ 

A fairer home, a goodlier land, his 
eyes had never seen. 

Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away 
where duty led, 10 

And the voice of God seemed calling, 
to break the living bread 

To the souls of fishers starving on the 
rocks of Marblehead. 

All day they sailed: at nightfall the 
pleasant land-breeze died. 

The blackening sky, at midnight, its 
starry lights denied. 

And far and low the thunder of tem- 
pest prophesied ! 

Blotted out were all the coast-lines, 

gone were rock, and wood, and 

sand; 
Grimly anxious stood the skipper 

with the rudder in his hand. 
And questioned of the darkness what 

was sea and what was land. 

And the preacher heard his dear ones, 

nestled round him, weeping 

sore : 
" Never heed, my little children ! 

Christ is walking on before 20 
To the pleasant land of heaven, where 

the sea shall be no more." 



THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY 73 



All at once the great cloud parted, like 
a curtain drawn aside, 

To let down the torch of lightning on 
the terror far and wide; 

And the thunder and the whirlwind 
together smote the tide. 

There was wailing in the shallop, wo- 
man's wail and man's de- 
spair, 

A crash of breaking timbers on the 
rocks so sharp and bare, 

And, through it all, the murmur of 
Father Avery's prayer. 

From his struggle in the darkness 

with the wild waves and the 

blast, 
On a rock, where every billow broke 

above him as it passed, 
Alone, of all his household, the man of 

God was cast. 30 

There a comrade heard him praying, 

in the pause of wave and 

wind: 
"All my own have gone before me, 

and I linger just behind; 
Not for life I ask, but only for the rest 

Thy ransomed find ! 

" In this night of death I challenge the 

promise of Thy word ! — 
Let me see the great salvation of 

which mine ears have heard ! — 
Let me pass from hence forgiven, 

through the grace of Christ, 

our Lord ! 

" In the baptism of these waters wash 

white my every sin, 
And let me follow up to Thee my 

household and my kin ! 
Open the sea-gate of Thy heaven, and 

let me enter in!" 

When the Christian sings his death- 
song, all the listening heavens 
draw near, 40 

And the angels, leaning over the walls 
of crystal, hear 

How the notes so faint and broken 
swell to music in God's ear. 

The ear of God was open to His ser- 
vant's last request; 



As the strong wave swept him down- 
ward the sweet hymn upward 
pressed. 

And the soul of Father Avery went, 
singing, to its rest. 

There was wailing on the mainland, 
from the rocks of Marblehead; 

In the stricken church of Newbury the 
notes of prayer were read; 

And long, by board and hearthstone, 
the living mourned the dead. 

And still the fishers outbound, or 
scudding from the squall, 

With grave and reverent faces, the an- 
cient tale recall, 50 

When they see the white waves break- 
ing on the Rock of Avery's 
Fall! 



THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE 
OF NEWBURY 

" Concerning y* Amphisbaena, as soon as 
I received your commands, I made dili- 
gent inquiry: ... he assures me y' it 
Iiad really two heads, one at each end; 
two mouths, two stings or tongues." — 
Rev. Christopher Toppan to Cotton 
Mather. 

Far away in the twilight time 
Of every people, in every clime, 
Dragons and griffins and monsters 

dire. 
Born of water, and air, and fire. 
Or nursed, like the Python, in the 

mud 
And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, 
Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, 
Through dusk tradition and ballad 

age. 
So from the childhood of Newbury 

town 
And its time of fable the tale comes 

down 10 

Of a terror which haunted bush and 

brake, 
The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake! 

Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, 
Consider that strip of Christian eartli 
On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, 
Full of terror and mystery. 



74 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Half redeemed from the evil hold 
Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and 

old, 
Which drank with its lips of leaves the 

dew 
When Time was young, and the world 

was new, 20 

And wove its shadows with sun and 

moon. 
Ere the stones of Cheops were squared 

and hewn. 
Think of the sea's dread monotone, 
Of the mournful wail from the pine- 
wood blown, 
Of the strange, vast splendors that lit' 

the North, 
Of the troubled throes of the quaking 

earth, 
And the dismal tales the Indian told. 
Till the settler's heart at his hearth 

grew cold, 
And he shrank from the tawny wizard 

boasts. 
And the hovering shadows seemed full 

of ghosts, 30 

And above, below, and on every side. 
The fear of his creed seemed verified ; — 
And think, if his lot were now thine 

own, 
To grope with terrors nor named nor 

known, 
How laxer muscle and weaker nerve 
And a feebler faith thy need might 

serve; 
And own to thyself the wonder more 
That the snake had two heads, and not 

a score ! 

Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen 
Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's 

Den, 40 

Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, 
Or coiled by the Northman's Written 

Rock, 
Nothing on record is left to show; 
Only the fact that he lived, we know. 
And left the cast of a double head 
In the scaly mask which he yearly 

shed. 
For he carried a head where his tail 

should be. 
And the two, of course, could never 

agree. 
But wriggled about with main and 

might, 49 

Now to the left and now to the right; 



Pulling and twisting this way and that, 
Neither knew what the other was at. 

A snake with two heads, lurking so 

near ! 
Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear! 
Think what ancient gossips might say, 
Shaking their heads in their dreary 

way. 
Between the meetings on Sabbath-day! 
How urchins, searching at day's de- 
cline 
The Common Pasture for sheep or 

kine. 
The terrible double-ganger heard 60 
In leafy rustle or whir of bird ! 
Think what a zest it gave to the sport. 
In berry-time, of the younger sort, 
As over pastures blackberry-twined, 
Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind. 
And closer and closer, for fear of harm, 
The maiden clung to her lover's arm; 
And how the spark, who was forced to 

stay. 
By his sweetheart's fears, till the break 

of day. 
Thanked the snake for the fond de- 
lay ! 70 

Far and wide the tale was told, 
Like a snowball growing while it rolled. 
The nurse hushed with it the baby's 

cry; 
And it served, in the worthy minister's 

To paint the primitive serpent by. 
Cotton Mather came galloping down 
All the way to Newbury town. 
With his eyes agog and his ears set 

wide. 
And his marvellous inkhorn at his side; 
Stirring the while in the shallow pool 
Of his brains for tlie lore he learned at 
school, 81 

To garnish the story, with here a 

streak 
Of Latin and there another of Greek : 
And the tales he heard and the notes 

he took. 
Behold ! are they not in his Wonder- 
Book? 

Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. 
If the snake does not, the tale runs 

still 
In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill. 



MABEL MARTIN 



75 



And still, whenever husband and wife 
Publish the shame of their daily 

strife, go 

And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and 

strain 
At either end of the marriage-chain, 
The gossips say with a knowing shake 
Of their gray heads, "Look at the 

Double Snake ! 
One in body and two in will, 
The Amphisbiena is living still !" 



MABEL MARTIN 

A HARVEST IDYL 
PROEM 

I CALL the old time back : I bring my 

lay 
In tender memory of the summer day 
When, where our native river lapsed 

away, 

We dreamed it over, while the thrushes 
made 

Songs of their own, and the great pine- 
trees laid 

On warm moonlights the masses of 
their shade. 

And she was with us, living o'er 

again 
Her life in ours, despite of years and 

pain, — 
The Autumn's brightness after latter 

rain. 
Beautiful in her holy peace as one lo 
Who stands, at evening, when the 

work is done, 
Glorified in the setting of the sun! 

Her memory makes our common land- 
scape seem 

Fairer than any of which painters 
dream ; 

Lights the brown hills and sings in 
every stream; 

For she whose speech was always 
truth's pure gold 

Heard, not unpleased, its simple le- 
gends told, 

And loved with us the beautiful and 
old. 



I. THE RIVER VALLEY 

Across the level tableland, 

A grassy, rarely trodden way, 20 
With thinnest skirt of birchen spray 

And stunted growth of cedar, leads 
To where you see the dull plain fall 
Sheer off, steep-slanted, ploughed 
by all 

The seasons' rainfalls. On its brink 
The over-leaning harebells swing, 
With roots half bare the pine-trees 
cling; 

And through the shadow looking 
west, 
You see the wavering river flow 
Along a vale, that far below 30 

Holds to the sun, the sheltering hills 
And glimmering water-line between, 
Broad fields of corn and meadows 
green. 

And fruit-bent orchards grouped 

around 
The low brown roofs and painted 

eaves. 
And chimney-tops half hid in leaves. 

No warmer valley hides behind 

Yon wind-scourged sand-dunes, cold 

and bleak; 
No fairer river comes to seek 

The wave-sung welcome of the sea, 40 
Or mark the northmost border line 
Of sun-loved growths of nut and 
vine. 

Here, ground-fast in their native 
fields, 
Untempted by the city's gain, 
The quiet farmer folk remain 

Who bear the pleasant name of 
Friends, 
And keep their fathers' gentle ways 
And simple speech of Bible days; 

In whose neat homesteads woman 
holds 
With modest ease her equal place, so 
And wears upon her tranquil face 



76 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The look of one who, merging not 
Her self-hood in another's will, 
Is love's and duty's handmaid still. 

Pass with me down the path that winds 
Through birches to the open land, 
Where, close upon the river strand 

You mark a cellar, vine o'errun. 
Above whose wall of loosened stones 
The sumach lifts its reddening 



cones, 



60 



And the black nightshade's berries 
shine. 
And broad, unsightly burdocks fold 
The household ruin, century-old. 

Here, in the dim colonial time 

Of sterner lives and gloomier faith, 
A woman lived, tradition saith, 

Who wrought her neighbors foul an- 
noy. 

And witched and plagued the coun- 
try-side. 

Till at the hangman's hand she died. 

Sit with me while the westering day 70 
Falls slantwise down the quiet vale. 
And, haply ere yon loitering sail. 

That rounds the upper headland, falls 
Below Deer Island's pines, or sees 
Behind it Hawkswood's belt of trees 

Rise black against the sinking sun, 
My idyl of its days of old, 
The valley's legend, shall be told. 

II. THE HUSKING 

It was the pleasant harvest-time, 79 
When cellar-bins are closely stowed. 
And garrets bend beneath their load. 

And the old swallow-haunted barns, — 
Brown-gabled, long, and full of 

seams 
Through which the moted sunlight 
streams. 

And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
And the loose hay-mow's scented 
locks, — 



Are filled with summer's ripened 

stores, 
Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
From their low scaffolds to their 

eaves. 90 

On Esek Harden's oaken floor, 

With many an autumn threshing 

worn. 
Lay the heaped ears of unhusked 

corn. 

And thither came young men and 
maids, ' 

Beneath a moon that, large and 
low. 

Lit that sweet eve of long ago. 

They took their places; some by 
chance, 
And others by a merry voice 
Or sweet smile guided to their 
choice. 

How pleasantly the rising moon, 100 
Between the shadow of the mows. 
Looked on them through the great 
elm-boughs ! 

On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned, 
On girlhood with its solid curves 
Of healthful strength and painless 
nerves ! 

And jests went round, and laughs that 

made 
The house-dog answer with his 

howl. 
And kept astir the barn-yard fowl; 

And quaint old songs their fathers 

sung 
In Derby dales and Yorkshire 

moors, no 

Ere Norman William trod their 

shores; 

And tales, whose merry license shook 
The fat sides of the Saxon thane. 
Forgetful of the hovering Dane, — 

Rude plays to Celt and Cimbri known. 
The charms and riddles that be- 
guiled 
On Oxus' banks the young world's 
child, — 



MABEL MARTIN 



77 



That primal picture-speech wherein 

Have youth and maid the story told, 
So new in each, so dateless old, 120 

Recalling pastoral Ruth in her 

Who waited, blushing and demure. 
The red-ear's kiss of forfeiture. 



III. THE WITCH S DAUGHTER 

But still the sweetest voice was mute 
That river-valley ever heard 
From lips of maid or throat of bird; 

For Mabel Martin sat apart. 

And let the hay-mow's shadow fall 
Upon the loveliest face of all. 

She sat apart, as one forbid, 130 

Who knew that none would conde- 
scend 
To own the Witch-wife's child a 
friend. 

The seasons scarce had gone their 

round, 
Since curious thousands thronged 

to see 
Her mother at the gallows-tree; 

And mocked the prison-palsied limbs 
That faltered on the fatal stairs, 
And wan lip trembling with its 
prayers ! 

Few questioned of the sorrowing child. 
Or, when they saw the mother 
die, 140 

Dreamed of the daughter's agony. 

They went up to their homes that day, 
As men and Christians justified: 
God willed it, and the wretch had 
died! 

Dear God and Father of us all, 
Forgive our faith in cruel lies, — 
Forgive the blindness that denies! 

Forgive thy creature when he takes, 
For the all-perfect love Thou art, 
Some grim creation of his heart. 1 5° 

Cast down our idols, overturn 
Our bloody altars; let us see 
Thyself in Thy humanity ! 



Young Mabel from her mother's grave 
Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, 
And wrestled with her fate alone; 

With love, and anger, and despair, 
The phantoms of disordered sense, 
The awful doubts of Providence ! 

Oh, dreary broke the winter days, 160 
And dreary fell the winter nights 
When, one by one, the neighboring 
lights 

Went out, and human sounds grew 

still. 
And all the phantom-peopled dark 
Closed round her hearth-fire's dying 

spark. 

And summer days were sad and 
long. 
And sad the uncompanioned eves, 
And sadder sunset-tinted leaves. 

And Indian Summer's airs of balm; 
She scarcely felt the soft caress, 1 70 
The beauty died of loneliness ! 

The school-boys jeered her as they 

passed, 
And, when she sought the house of 

prayer. 
Her mother's curse pursued her 

there. 

And still o'er many a neighboring door 
She saw the horseshoe's curved 

charm. 
To guard against her mother's harm: 

That mother, poor and sick and lame, 
Who daily, by the old arm-chair, 
Folded her withered hands in 



prayer; 



180 



Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail, 
Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er. 
When her dim eyes could read no 
more! 

Sore tried and pained, the poor girl 

kept 
Her faith, and trusted that her 

way. 
So dark , would somewhere meet the 

day. 



78 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And still her weary wheel went round 
Day after day, with no relief: 
Small leisure have the poor for 
grief, 

IV. THE CHAMPION 

So in the shadow Mabel sits; 190 

Untouched by mirth she sees and 

hears, 
Her smile is sadder than her tears. 

But cruel eyes have found her out, 
And cruel lips repeat her name, 
And taunt her with her mother's 
shame. 

She answered not with railing words, 
But drew her apron o'er her face. 
And, sobbing, glided from the place. 

And only pausing at the door, 

Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze 
Of one who, in her better days, 201 

Had been her warm and steady friend. 
Ere yet her mother's doom had made 
Even Esek Harden half afraid. 

He felt that mute appeal of tears. 
And, starting, with an angry frown. 
Hushed all the wicked murmurs 
down. 

" Good neighbors mine," he sternly 
said, 
'* This passes harmless mirth or jest; 
I brook no insult to my guest. 210 

" She is indeed her mother's child, 
But God's sweet pity ministers 
Unto no whiter soul than hers. 

" Let Goody Martin rest in peace; 
I never knew her liarm a fly, 
And witch or not, God knows — not 



" I know who swore her life away; 
And as God lives, I'd not condemn 
An Indian dog on word of them." 

The broadest lands in all the town, 220 
The skill to guide, the power to awe. 
Were Harden's; and his word was 
law. 



None dared withstand him to his face, 
But one sly maiden spake aside: 
"The little witch is evil-eyed! 

" Her mother only killed a cow. 
Or witched a churn or dairy-pan; 
But she, forsooth, must charm a 
man ! " 

V. IN THE SHADOW 

Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed 
The nameless terrors of the wood, 230 
And saw, as if a ghost pursued. 

Her shadow gliding in the moon; 
The soft breath of the west-wind 

gave 
A chill as from her mother's grave. 

How dreary seemed the silent house ! 
Wide in the moonbeams' ghastly 

glare 
Its windows had a dead man's stare! 

And, like a gaunt and spectral hand. 
The tremulous shadow of a birch 
Reached out and touched the door's 
low porch, 240 

As if to lift its latch; hard by, 
A sudden warning call she heard, 
The night-cry of a boding bird. 

She leaned against the door; her face, 
So fair, so young, so full of pain. 
White in the moonlight's silver rain. 

The river, on its pebbled rim, 

Made music such as childhood 

knew; 
The door-yard tree was whisp)ered 

through 

By voices such as childhood's ear 250 
Had heard in moonlights long ago; 
And through the willow-boughs be- 
low 

She saw the rippled waters shine; 
Beyond, in waves of shade and light, 
The hills rolled off into the night. 

She saw and heard, but over all 
A sense of some transforming spell, 
The shadow of her sick heart fell. 



MABEL MARTIN 



79 




" her face, 

So fair, so young, so full of pain ' 



And still across the wooded space 
The harvest lights of Harden shone, 2 60 
And song and jest and laugh went 
on. 

And he, so gentle, true, and strong, 
Of men the bravest and the best, 
Had he, too, scorned her with the 
rest? 



She strove to drown her sense of 
wrong, 
And, in her old and simple way, 
To teach her bitter heart to pray. 

Poor child! the prayer, begun in 
faith. 
Grew to a low, despairing cry 
Of utter misery : "Let me die! =70 



8o 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



*' Oh ! take me from the scornful eyes, 
And hide me where the cruel speech 
And mocking finger may not reach ! 

"I dare not breathe my mother's 
name : 
A daughter's right I dare not crave 
To weep above her unblest grave ! 

'' Let me not live until my heart, 
With few to pity, and with none 
To love me, hardens into stone 

" O God ! have mercy on Thy child, 280 
Whose faith in Thee grows weak 

and small. 
And take me ere I lose it all ! " 

A shadow on the moonlight fell. 
And murmuring wind and wave be- 
came 
A voice whose burden was her name. 

VI. THE BETROTHAL 

Had then God heard her? Had He 
sent 
His angel down ? In flesh and blood, 
Before her Esek Harden stood ! 

He laid his hand upon her arm: 
"Dear Mabel, this no more shall 
be; 290 

Who scoffs at you must scoff at me. 

''You know rough Esek Harden well; 
And if he seems no suitor gay, 
And if his hair is touched with gray, 

" The maiden grown shall never find 
His heart less warm than when she 

smiled, 
Upon his knees a little child!" 

Her tears of grief were tears of joy, 
As, folded in his strong embrace, 
She looked in Esek Harden's face. 

" O truest friend of all ! " she said, 301 
"God bless you for your kindly 

thought. 
And make me worthy of my lot !" 

He led her forth, and, blent in one. 
Beside their happy pathway ran 
The shadows of the maid and man. 



He led her through his dewy fields. 
To where the swinging lanterns 

glowed. 
And through the doors the huskers 
showed. 

" Good friends and neighbors ! " Esek 
said, 310 

"I'm weary of this lonely life; 
In Mabel see my chosen wife ! 

"She greets you kindly, one and all; 
The past is past, and all offence 
Falls harmless from her innocence. 

"Henceforth she stands no more 
alone; 
You know what Esek Harden is; — 
He brooks no wrong to him or his. 

" Now let the merriest tales be told, 3 19 
And let the sweetest songs be sung 
That ever made the old heart young! 

" For now the lost has found a home; 
And a lone hearth shall brighter 

burn. 
As all the household joys return !" 

Oh, pleasantly the harvest-moon, 
Between the shadow of the mows. 
Looked on them through the great 
elm-boughs ! 

On Mabel's curls of golden hair, 
On Esek's shaggy strength it fell; 
And the wind whispered, "It is 
well!" 330 

THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL 
SEWALL 

1697 

Up and down the village streets 
Strange are the forms my fancy meets. 
For the thoughts and things of to-day 

are hid. 
And through the veil of a closed lid 
The ancient worthies I see again: 
I hear the tap of the elder's cane. 
And his awful periwig I see. 
And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. 
Stately and slow, with thoughtful air. 
His black cap hiding his whitened 

hair, 10 



THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEW ALL 



8i 




Samuel Sewall 



Walks the Judge of the great Assize, 
Samuel Sewall the good and wise. 
His face with lines of firmness wrought, 
He wears the look of a man unbought, 
Who swears to his hurt and changes 

not; 
Yet, touched and softened nevertheless 
With the grace of Christian gentleness. 
The face that a child would climb to 

kiss ! 



True and tender and brave and just, 
That man might honor and woman 
trust. *° 

Touching and sad, a tale is told, 
Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist 

old, 
Of the fast which the good man life- 
long kept 
With a haunting sorrow that never slept, 



82 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



As the circling year brought round the 
time 

Of an error that left the sting of crime, 

When he sat on the bench of the witch- 
craft courts, 

With the laws of Moses and Hale's 
Reports, 

And spake, in the name of both, the 
word 

That gave the witch's neck to the 
cord, 30 

And piled the oaken planks that 
pressed 

The feeble life from the warlock's 
breast ! 

All the day long, from dawn to dawn, 

His door was bolted, his curtain drawn; 

No foot on his silent threshold trod, 

No eye looked on him save that of 
God, 

As he baffled the ghosts of the dead 
with charms 

Of penitent tears, and prayers, and 
psalms. 

And, with precious proofs from the sa- 
cred word 

Of the boundless pity and love of the 
Lord, 40 

His faith confirmed and his trust re- 
newed 

That the sin of his ignorance, sorely 
rued, 

Might be washed away in the mingled 
flood 

Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear 
blood ! 

Green forever the memory be 
Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, 
Whom even his errors glorified. 
Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side 
By the cloudy shadows which o'er it 

glide ! 
Honor and praise to the Puritan so 
Who the halting step of his age outran, 
And, seeing the infinite worth of man 
In the priceless gift the Father gave, 
In the infinite love that stooped to 

save. 
Dared not brand his brother a slave ! 
*' Who doth such wrong," he was wont 

to say. 
In his own quaint, picture-loving way, 
" Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade 
Which God shall cast down upon his 

head!" 



Widely as heaven and hell, con- 
trast 60 

That brave old jurist of the past 

And the cunning trickster and knave 
of courts 

Who the holy features of Truth dis- 
torts, — 

Ruling as right the will of the strong. 

Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong; 

Wide-eared to power, to the wronged 
and weak 

Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek; 

Scoffing aside at party's nod 

Order of nature and law of God; 

For whose dabbled ermine respect 
were waste, 70 

Reverence folly, and awe misplaced; 

Justice of whom 't were vain to seek 

As from Koordish robber or Syrian 
Sheik ! 

Oh, leave the wretch to his bribes and 
sins; 

Let him rot in the web of lies he spins ! 

To the saintly soul of the early day, 

To the Christian judge, let us turn and 
say: 

" Praise and thanks for an honest 
man! — 

Glory to God for the Puritan ! " 

I see, far southward, this quiet day, 
The hills of Newbury rolling away, 81 
With the many tints of the season gay, 
Dreamily blending in autumn mist 
Crimson, and gold, and amethyst. 
Long and low, with dwarf trees 

crowned. 
Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, 
A stone's toss over the narrow 

sound. 
Inland, as far as the eye can go. 
The hills curve round like a bended 

bow; 
A silver arrow from out them sprung, 
I see the shine of the Quasycung; 91 
And, round and round, over valley 

and hill. 
Old roads winding, as old roads will, 
Here to a ferry, and there to a mill; 
And glimpses of chimneys and gabled 

eaves. 
Through green elm arches and maple 

leaves, — 
Old homesteads sacred to all that 

can 
Gladden or sadden the heart of man, 



THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL 



^3 



Over whose thresholds of oak and 
stone 

Life and Death have come and gone ! 

There pictured tiles in the fireplace 
show, loi 

Great beams sag from the ceiling low, 

The dresser glitters with polished 
wares, 

The long clock ticks on the foot-worn 
stairs, 

And the low, broad chimney shows the 
crack 

By the earthquake made a century 
back. 

Up from their midst springs the vil- 
lage spire 

With the crest of its cock in the sun 
afire; 

Beyond are orchards and planting 
lands. 

And great salt marshes and glimmer- 
ing sands, no 

And, where north and south the coast- 
lines run. 

The blink of the sea in breeze and sun ! 

I see it all like a chart unrolled, 
But my thoughts are full of the past 

and old, 
I hear the tales of my boyhood told ; 
And the shadows and shapes of early 

days 
Flit dimly by in the veiling haze. 
With measured movement and rhyth- 
mic chime 
Weaving like shuttles my web of 

rhyme. ng 

I think of the old man wise and good 
Who once on yon misty hillsides stood, 
(A poet who never measured rhyme, 
A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,) 
And, propped on his staff of age, 

looked down. 
With his boyhood's love, on his native 

town, 
Where, written as if on its hills and 

plains, 
His burden of prophecy yet remains. 
For the voices of wood, and wave, and 

wind 
To read in the ear of the musing 

mind: — 

"As long as Plum Island, to guard 

the coast 130 

As God appointed, shall keep its post; 



As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep 
Of Merrimac River, or sturgeon leap; 
As long as pickerel swift and slim. 
Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond 

swim; 
As long as the annual sea-fowl know 
Their time to come and their time to 

go; 

As long as cattle shall roam at will 

The green grass meadows by Turkey 
Hill; 

As long as sheep shall look from the 
side 140 

Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide. 

And Parker River, and salt-sea tide; 

As long as a wandering pigeon shall 
search 

The fields below from his white-oak 
perch, 

When the barley-harvest is ripe and 
shorn. 

And the dry husks fall from the stand- 
ing corn; 

As long as Nature shall not grow old. 

Nor drop her work from her doting 
hold. 

And her care for the Indian corn for- 
get, _ 149 

And the yellow rows in pairs to set; — 

So long shall Christians here be born. 

Grow up and ripen as God's sweet 
corn ! — 

By the beak of bird, by the breath of 
frost. 

Shall never a holy ear be lost. 

But, husked by Death in the Planter's 
sight. 

Be sown again in the fields of light ! " 

The Island still is purple with plums, 

Up the river the salmon comes. 

The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl 

feeds 
On hillside berries and marish seeds, — 
All the beautiful signs remain, 161 
From spring-time sowing to autumn 

rain 
The good man's vision returns again ! 
And let us hope, as well we can. 
That the Silent Angel who garners man 
May find some grain as of old he found 
In the human cornfield ripe and sound. 
And the Lord of the Harvest deign to 

own 
The precious seed by the fathers 

sown! 



84 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR 

Out and in the river is winding 
The Hnks of its long, red chain, 

Through belts of dusky pine-land 
And gusty leagues of plain. 

Only, at times, a smoke-wreath 

With the drifting cloud-rack joins, — 

The smoke of the hunting-lodges 
Of the wild Assiniboins ! 

Drearily blows the north-wind 
From the land of ice and snow; 

The eyes that look are weary. 
And heavy tlie hands that row. 

And with one foot on the water, 

And one upon the shore, 
The Angel of Shadow gives warning 

That day shall be no more. 

Is it the clang of wild-geese ? 

Is it the Indian's yell, 
That lends to the voice of the north- 
wind 

The tones of a far-off bell ? 

The voyageur smiles as he listens 
To the sound that grows apace; 

Well he knows the vesper ringing 
Of the bells of St. Boniface. 

The bells of the Roman Mission, 
That call from their turrets twain. 

To the boatman on the river. 
To the hunter on the plain ! 

Even so in our mortal journey 
The bitter north-winds blow, 

And thus upon life's Red River 
Our hearts, as oarsmen, row. 

And when the Angel of Shadow 
Rests his feet on wave and shore. 

And our eyes grow dim with watching 
And our hearts faint at the oar, 

Happy is he who heareth 

The signal of his release 
In the bells of the Holy City, 

The chimes of eternal peace ! 



THE PREACHER 

Its windows flashing to the sky, 
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown. 



Far down the vale, my friend and I 
Beheld the old and quiet town; 
The ghostly sails that out at sea 
Flapped their white wings of mys- 
tery; 
The beaches glimmering in the sun, 
And the low wooded capes that run 
Into the sea-mist north and south; 9 
The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth; 
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar, 
The foam-line of the harbor-bar. 

Over the woods and meadow-lands 

A crimson-tinted shadow lay. 

Of clouds through which the setting 

day 
Flung a slant glory far away. 
It glittered on the wet sea-sands, 
It flamed upon the city's panes, 
Smote the white sails of ships that 

wore 
Outward or in, and glided o'er 20 

The steeples with their veering 

vanes ! 
Awhile my friend with rapid search 
O'erran the landscape. " Yonder spire 
Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire; 
What is it, pray?" — "The White- 
field Church ! 
Walled about by its basement stones. 
There rest the marvellous prophet's 

bones." 
Then as our homeward way we 

walked. 
Of the great preacher's life we talked; 
And through the mystery of our 

theme 30 

The outward glory seemed to stream. 
And Nature's self interpreted 
The doubtful record of the dead; 
And every level beam that smote 
The sails upon the dark afloat 
A symbol of the light l)ecame. 
Which touched the shadows of our 

blame 
With tongues of Pentecostal flame. 

Over the roofs of the pioneers 
Gathers the moss of a hundred years; 
On man and his works has passed the 

change 41 

Which needs must be in a century's 

range. 
The lan^ lies open and warm in the 

sun. 
Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, — 



I 



THE PREACHER 



85 



Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the 

plain, 
The wilderness gladdened with fruit 

and grain ! 
But the living faith of the settlers old 
A dead profession their children hold; 
To the lust of ofhce and greed of trade. 
A stepping-stone is the altar made, so 
The Church, to place and power the 

door, 
Rebukes the sin of the world no 

more. 
Nor sees its Lord in the homeless 

poor. 
Everywhere is the grasping hand. 
And eager adding of land to land; 
And earth, which seemed to the fa- 
thers meant 
But as a pilgrim's wayside tent, — 
A nightly shelter to fold away 
When the Lord should call at the 

break of day, — 
Solid and steadfast seems to be, 60 
And Time has forgotten Eternity ! 

But fresh and green from the rotting 

roots 
Of primal forests the young growth 

shoots; 
From the death of the old the new pro- 
ceeds, 
And the life of truth from the rot of 

creeds: 
On the ladder of God, which upward 

leads, 
The steps of progress are human needs. 
For His judgments still are a mighty 

deep, 
And the eyes of His providence never 

sleep : 
When the night is darkest He gives 

the morn; 70 

When the famine is sorest, the wine 

and corn ! 

In the church of the wilderness Ed- 
wards wrought, 

Shaping his creed at the forge of 
thought; 

And with Thor's own hammer welded 
and bent 

The iron links of his argument, 

Which strove to grasp in its mighty 
span 

The purpose of God and the fate of 
man! 



Yet faithful still, in his daily round 

To the weak, and the poor, and sin- 
sick found. 

The schoolman's lore and the casuist's 
art 80 

Drew warmth and life from his fer- 
vent heart. 

Had he not seen in the solitudes 

Of his deep and dark Northampton 
woods 

A vision of love about him fall ? 

Not the blinding splendor which fell 
on Saul, 

But the tenderer glory that rests on 
them 

Who walk in the New Jerusalem, 

Where never the sun nor moon are 
known. 

But the Lord and His love are the 
light alone ! 

And watching the sweet, still counte- 
nance 90 

Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance, 

Had he not treasured each broken 
word 

Of the mystical wonder seen and 
heard; 

And loved the l^eautiful dreamer more 

That thus to the desert of earth she 
bore 

Clusters of Eshcol from Canaan's 
shore ? 

As the barley-winnower, holding with 

pain 
Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain. 
Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze 
Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys, 
So he who had waited long to hear loi 
The sound of the Spirit drawing 

near, 
Like that which the son of Iddo heard 
When the feet of angels the myrtles 

stirred. 
Felt the answer of prayer, at last, 
As over his church the afflatus passed. 
Breaking its sleep as breezes break 
To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake. 

At first a tremor of silent fear, 109 
The creep of the flesh at danger near, 
A vague foreboding and discontent 
Over the hearts of the people went. 

All nature warned in sounds and 
signs : 



86 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The wind in the tops of the forest 

pines 
In the name of the Highest called to 

prayer, 
As the muezzin calls from the minaret 

stair. 
Through ceiled chambers of secret sin 
Sudden and strong the light shone in; 
A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs 
Startled the man of title-deeds; 120 
The trembling hand of the worldling 

shook 
The dust of years from the Holy Book; 
And the psalms of David, forgotten 

long, 
Took the place of the scoffer's song. 
The impulse spread like the outward 

course 
Of waters moved by a central force; 
The tide of spiritual life rolled down 
From inland mountains to seaboard 

town. 

Prepared and ready the altar stands 
Waiting the prophet's outstretched 

hands 130 

And prayer availing, to downward call 
The fiery answer in view of all. 
Hearts are like wax in the furnace; 

who 
Shall mould, and shape, and cast them 

anew? 
Lo! by the Merrimac Whitefield 

stands 
In the temple that never was made by 

hands, — 
Curtains of azure, and crystal wall, 
And dome of the sunshine over all — 
A homeless pilgrim, with dubious 

name 
Blown about on the winds of fame; 140 
Now as an angel of blessing classed, 
And now as a mad enthusiast. 
Called in liis youth to sound and gauge 
The moral lapse of his race and age. 
And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw 
Of human frailty and perfect law; 
Possessed bv the one dread thought 

that lent 
Its goad to his fiery temperament, 
Up and down the world he went, 149 
A John the Baptist crying. Repent ! 

No perfect whole can our nature make; 
Here or there the circle will break ; 
The orb of life as it takes the light 



On one side leaves the other in night. 
Never was saint so good and great 
As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate 
For the plea of the Devil's advocate. 
So, incomplete by his being's law. 
The marvellous preacher had his flaw; 
.With step unequal, and lame with 
faults, 160 

His shade on the path of History halts. 

Wisely and well said the Eastern bard: 
Fear is easy, but love is hard, — 
Easy to glow with the Santon's rage, 
And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage; 
But he is greatest and best who can 
Worship Allah by loving man. 
Thus he, — to whom, in the painful 

stress 
Of zeal on fire from its own excess. 
Heaven seemed so vast and earth so 

small 170 

That man was nothing, since God was 

all, — 
Forgot, as the best at times have done. 
That the love of the Lord and of man 

are one. 

Little to him whose feet unshod 
The thorny path of the desert trod, 
Careless of pain, so it led to God, 
Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor 

man's wrong. 
The weak ones trodden beneath the 

strong. 
Should the worm be chooser ? — the 

clay withstand 179 

The shaping will of the potter's hand ? 

In the Indian fable Arjoon hears 
The scorn of a god rebuke his fears: 
" Spare thy pity ! " Krishna saith; 
"Not in thy sword is the power of 

death ! 
All is illusion, — loss but seems; 
Pleasure and pain are only dreams; 
Who deems he slayeth doth not kill; 
Who counts as slain is living still. 
Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime; 
Nothing dies but the cheats of 

time; 190 

Slain or slayer, small the odds 
To each, immortal as Indra's gods!" 

So by Savannah's banks of shade, 
The stones of his mission the preacher 
laid 



THE PREACHER 



87 




George Whitefield 



On the heart of the negro crushed and 
rent, 

And made of his blood the wall's ce- 
ment; 

Bade the slave-ship speed from coast 
to coast, 

Fanned by the wings of the Holy 
Ghost; 



And begged, for the love of Christ, the 

gold 
Coined from the hearts in its groanmg 

hold. 200 

What could it matter, more or less 
Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness ? 
Living or dying, bond or free, 
What was time to eternity ? 



88 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Alas for the preacher's cherished 

schemes ! 
Mission and church are now but 

dreams; 
Nor prayer nor fasting availed the 

plan 
To honor God through the wrong of 

■ man. 
Of all his labors no trace remains 
Save the bondman lifting his hands 

in chains. 210 

The woof he wove in the righteous 

warp 
Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe 
Clothes with curses the goodly land, 
Changes its greenness and bloom to 

sand; 
And a century's lapse reveals once 

more 
The slave-ship stealing to Georgia's 

shore. 
Father of Light ! how blind is he 
Who sprinkles the altar he rears to 

Thee 
With the blood and tears of humanity ! 

He erred : shall we count His gifts as 

naught? 220 

Was the work of God in him un- 

wrought ? 
The servant may through his deaf- 

. ness err, 
And blind may be God's messenger; 
But the errand is sure they go upon, — 
The word is spoken, the deed is 

done. 
Was the Hebrew temple less fair and 

good 
That Solomon bowed to gods of wood ? 
For his tempted heart and wandering 

feet. 
Were the songs of David less pure and 

sweet ? 
So in light and shadow the preacher 

went, 230 

God's erring and human instrument; 
And the hearts of the people where he 

passed 
Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast," 
Under the spell of a voice which took 
In its compass the flow of Siloa's 

brook, 
And the mystical chime of the bells of 

gold 
On the ephod's hem of the priest of 

old,— 



Now the roll of thunder, and now the 

awe 
Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of 

Law. 

A solemn fear on the listening crowd 
Fell like the shadow of a cloud. 241 
The sailor reeling from out the ships 
Whose masts stood thick in the river- 
slips 
Felt the jest and the curse die on his 

lips. 
Listened the fisherman rude and hard, 
The calker rough from the builder's 

yard; 
The man of the market left his load, 
The teamster leaned on his bending 

goad. 
The maiden, and youth beside her, 

felt 
Their hearts in a closer union melt, 250 
And saw the flowers of their love in 

bloom 
Down the endless vistas of life to 

come. 
Old age sat feebly brushing away 
From his ears the scanty locks of gray ; 
And careless boyhood, living the free 
Unconscious life of bird and tree. 
Suddenly wakened to a sense 
Of sin and its guilty consequence. 
It was as if an angel's voice 
Called the listeners up for their final 

choice; 260 

As if a strong hand rent apart 
The veils of sense from soul and heart. 
Showing in light ineffable 
The joys of heaven and woes of hell ! 
All about in the misty air 
The hills seemed kneeling in silent 

prayer; 
The rustle of leaves, the moaning 

sedge, 
The water's lap on its gravelled edge. 
The wailing pines, and, far and faint. 
The wood-dove's note of sad com- 
plaint, — 27c 
To the solemn voice of the preacher 

lent 
An undertone as of low lament; 
And the rote of the sea from its sandy 

coast. 
On the easterly wind, now heard, now 

lost. 
Seemed the murmurous sound of the 

judgment host. 



THE PREACHER 



89 



Yet wise men doubted, and good men 

wept, 
As that storm of passion above them 

swept, 
And, comet-hke, adding flame to 

flame, 
The priests of the new Evangel 

came, — 279 

Davenport, flashing upon the crowd. 
Charged Uke summer's electric cloud. 
Now holding the listener still as death 
With terrible warnings under breath, 
Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed 
The vision of Heaven's beatitude ! 
And Celtic Tennant, his long coat 

bound 
Like a monk's with leathern girdle 

round, 
Wild with the toss of unshorn hair, 
And wringing of hands, and eyes 

aglare, 
Groaning under the world's despair ! 
Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to 

lose, 291 

Prophesied to the empty pews 
That gourds would wither, and mush- 
rooms die. 
And noisiest fountains run soonest dry. 
Like the spring that gushed in New- 
bury Street, 
Under the tramp of the earthquake's 

feet, 
A silver shaft in the air and light, 
For a single day, then lost in night. 
Leaving only, its place to tell, 
Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell. 300 
With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat 

cool. 
Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule, 
No longer harried, and cropped, and 

fleeced. 
Flogged by sheriff and cursed by 

priest, 
But by wiser counsels left at ease 
To settle quietly on his lees, 
And, self-concentred, to count as done 
The work which his fathers well begun. 
In silent protest of letting alone. 
The Quaker kept the way of his 

own, — 310 

A non-conductor among the wires, 
With coat of asbestos proof to fires. 
And quite unable to mend his pace 
To catch the falling manna of grace, 
He hugged the closer his little store 
Of faith, and silently prayed for more. 



And vague of creed and barren of rite, 
But holding, as in his Master's sight. 
Act and thought to the inner light, 
The round of his simple duties 

walked, 320 

And strove to live what the others 

talked. 

And who shall marvel if evil went 
Step by step with the good intent. 
And with love and meekness, side by 

side, 
Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride ? — 
That passionate longings and fancies 

vain 
Set the heart on fire and crazed the 

brain ? 
That over the holy oracles 
Folly sported with cap and bells ? 
That goodly women and learned 

men 330 

Marvelling told with tongue and pen 
How unweaned children chirped like 

birds 
Texts of Scripture and solemn words, 
Like the infant seers of the rocky glens 
In the Puy de Dome of wild Cevennes: 
Or baby Lamas who pray and preach 
From Tartar cradles in Buddha's 

speech ? 

In the war which Truth or Freedom 

wages 
With impious fraud and the wrong of 

ages, 
Hate and malice and self-love mar 340 
The notes of triumph with painful jar. 
And the helping angels turn aside 
Their sorrowing faces the shame to 

hide. 
Never on custom's oiled grooves 
The world to a higher level moves. 
But grates and grinds with friction 

hard 
On granite boulder and flinty shard. 
The heart must bleed before it feels, 
The pool be troubled before it heals; 
Ever by losses the right must gain, 350 
Every good have its birth of pain; 
The active Virtues blush to find 
The Vices wearing their badge behind, 
And Graces and Charities feel the fire 
Wherein the sins of the age expire; 
The fiend still rends as of old he rent 
The tortured body from which he 

went. 



90 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



But Time tests all. In the over-drift 
And flow of the Nile, with its annual 

gift, 
Who cares for the Hadji's relics 

sunk ? 360 

Who thinks of the drowned-out Coptic 

monk ? 



But left a result of holier lives, 371 

Tenderer mothers and worthier 
wives. 

The husband and father whose chil- 
dren fled 

And sad wife wept when his drunken 
tread 




Whitefield Church 



The tide that loosens the temple's 

stones, 
And scatters the sacred ibis-bones. 
Drives away from the valley-land 
That Arab robber, the wandering 

sand. 
Moistens the fields that know no rain. 
Fringes the desert with belts of grain, 
And bread to the sower brings again. 
So the flood of emotion deep and 

strong 
Troubled the land as its wept along. 



Frightened peace from his roof-tree's 
shade. 

And a rock of ofTence his hearthstone 
made. 

In a strength that was not his own be- 
gan 

To rise from the brute's to the plane of 
man. 

Old friends embraced, long held apart 

By evil counsel and pride of heart; 380 

And penitence saw through misty 
tears, 



THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA 



91 



In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears, 

The promise of Heaven's eternal 
years, — 

The peace of God for the world's an- 
noy, — 

Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy ! 

Under the church of Federal Street, 
Under the tread of its Sabbath feet. 
Walled about by its basement stones, 
Lie the marvellous preacher's bones. 
No saintly honors to them are 
shown, 390 

No sign nor miracle have they known; 
But he who passes the ancient church 
Stops in the shade of its belfry -porch. 
And ponders the wonderful life of him 
Who lies at rest in that charnel dim. 
Long shall the traveller strain his eye 
From the railroad car, as it plunges by. 
And the vanishing town behind him 

search 
For the slender spire of the Whitefield 

Church; 
And feel for one moment the ghosts of 
trade, 400 

And fashion, and folly, and pleasure 

laid, 
By the thought of that life of pure in- 
tent. 
That voice of warning yet eloquent. 
Of one on the errands of angels sent. 
And if where he labored the flood of sin 
Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in. 
And over a life of time and sense 
The church-spires lift their vain de- 
fence, 
As if to scatter the bolts of God 
With the points of Calvin's thunder- 
rod, — 410 
Still, as the gem of its civic crown. 
Precious beyond the world's renown, 
His memory hallows the ancient town ! 



THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA 
1675 

Raze these long blocks of brick and 

stone. 
These huge mill-monsters overgrown; 
Blot out the humbler piles as well, 
Where, moved like living shuttles, 

dwell 
The weaving genii of the bell; 



Tear from the wild Cocheco's track 
The dams that hold its torrents back; 
And let the loud-rejoicing fall 
Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall; 
And let the Indian's paddle play 10 
On the unbridged Piscataqua ! 
Wide over hill and valley spread 
Once more the forest, dusk and dread. 
With here and there a clearing cut 
From the walled shadows round it 

shut; 
Each with its farm-house builded 

rude. 
By English yeoman squared and 

hewed, 
And the grim, flankered block-house 

bound 
With bristling palisades around. 
So, haply shall before thine eyes 20 
The dusty veil of centuries rise, 
The old, strange scenery overlay 
The tamer pictures of to-day, 
While, like the actors in a play. 
Pass in their ancient guise along 
The figures of my border song: 
What time beside Cocheco's flood 
The white man and the red man stood, 
With words of peace and brotherhood; 
When passed the sacred calumet 30 
From lip to lip with fire-draught wet, 
And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's 

smoke ' 
Through the gray beard of Waldron 

broke. 
And Squando's voice, in suppliant plea 
For mercy, struck the haughty key 
Of one who held, in any fate. 
His native pride inviolate ! 

" Let your ears be opened wide ! 
He who speaks has never lied. 
Waldron of Piscataqua, 40 

Hear what Squando has to say ! 

'' Squando shuts his eyes and sees, 
Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees. 
In his wigwam, still as stone, 
Sits a woman all alone, 

'' Wampum beads and birchen strands 
Dropping from her careless hands, 
Listening ever for the fleet 
Patter of a dead child's feet ! 

" When the moon a year ago 50 

Told the flowers the time to blow, 



92 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



In that lonely wigwam smiled 
Menewee, our little child. 

" Ere that moon grew thin and old, 
He was lying still and cold; 
Sent before us, weak and small, 
When the Master did not call ! 

" On his little grave I lay; 
Three times went and came the day, 
Thrice above me blazed the noon, 60 
Thrice upon me wept the moon. 

" In the third night-watch I heard. 
Far and low, a spirit-bird; 
Very mournful, very wild. 
Sang the totem of my child. 

"'Menewee, poor Menewee, 
Walks a path he cannot see: 
Let the white man's wigwam light 
With its blaze his steps aright. 

" ' All-uncalled, he dares not show 70 
Empty hands to Manito: 
Better gifts he cannot bear 
Than the scalps his slayers wear.' 

" All the while the totem sang. 
Lightning blazed and thunder rang; 
And a black cloud, reaching high, 
Pulled the white moon from the sky. 

"I, the medicine-man, whose ear 
All that spirits hear can hear, — 
I, whose eyes are wide to see 80 

All the things that are to be, — 

" Well I knew the dreadful signs 
In the whispers of the pines, 
In the river roaring loud. 
In the mutter of the cloud. 

" At the breaking of the day. 
From the grave I passed away; 
Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang 

glad. 
But my heart was hot and mad. 

" There is rust on Squando's knife 90 
From the warm, red springs of life; 
On the funeral hemlock-trees 
Many a scalp the totem sees. 

" Blood for blood ! But evermore 
Squando's heart is sad and sore; 



And his poor squaw waits at 

home 
For the feet that never come ! 

" Waldron of Cocheco, hear ! 
Squando speaks, who laughs at 

fear; 
Take the captives he has ta'en; 100 
Let the land have peace again!" 

As the words died on his tongue, 
Wide apart his warriors swung; 
Parted, at the sign he gave. 
Right and left, like Egypt's wave. 

And, like Israel passing free 
Through the prophet-charmed sea. 
Captive mother, wife, and child 
Through the dusky terror filed. 

One alone, a little maid, no 

Middleway her steps delayed. 
Glancing, with qiiick, troubled sight. 
Round about from red to white. 

Then his hand the Indian laid 
On the little maiden's head, 
Lightly from her .forehead fair 
Smoothing back her yellow hair. 

" Gift or favor ask I none; 
Wliat I have is all my own: 
Never yet the birds have sung, 120 
'Squando hath a beggar's tongue.' 

" Yet for her who waits at home, 
For the dead who cannot come, 
I^et the little Gold-hair be 
In the place of Menewee ! 

"Mishanock, my little star! 
Come to Saco's pines afar; 
Where the sad one waits at home, 
Wequashim, my moonlight, come ! " 

"What!" quoth Waldron, "leave a 
child 130 

Christian-born to heathens wild ? 
As God lives, from Satan's hand 
I will pluck her as a brand!" 

"Hear me, white man!" Squando 

cried; 
" Let the little one decide. 
Wequashim, my moonlight, say, 
Wilt thou go with me, or stay?" 



MY PLAYMATE 



93 



Slowly, sadly, half afraid, 
Half regretfully, the maid 139 

Owned the ties of blood and race, — 
Turned from Squando's pleading face. 

Not a word the Indian spoke. 
But his wampum chain he broke, 
And the beaded wonder hung 
On that neck so fair and young. 

Silence-shod, as phantoms seem 
In the marches of a dream, 
Single-filed, the grim array 
Through the pine-trees wound away. 

Doubting, trembling, sore amazed, 150 
Through her tears the young child 

gazed. 
"God preserve her!" Waldron said; 
"Satan hath bewitched the maid!" 

Years went and came. At close of 

day 
Singing came a child from play. 
Tossing from her loose-locked head 
Gold in sunshine, brown in shade. 

Pride was in the mother's look. 
But her head she gravely shook, 
And with lips that fondly smiled 160 
Feigned to chide her truant child. 

Unabashed, the maid began: 
" Up and down the brook I ran. 
Where, beneath the bank so steep, 
Lie the spotted trout asleep. 

" ' Chip ! ' went squirrel on the wall, 
After me I heard him call. 
And the cat-bird on the tree 
Tried his best to mimic me. 

" Where the hemlocks grew so dark 170 
That I stopped to look and hark. 
On a log, with feather-hat, 
By the path, an Indian sat. 

"Then I cried, and ran away; 
But he called, and bade me stay; 
And his voice was good and mild 
As my mother's to her child. 

" And he took my wampum chain, 
Looked and looked it o'er again; 
Gave me berries, and, beside, 180 

On my neck a plaything tied." 



Straight the mother stooped to see 
What the Indian's gift might be. 
On the braid of wampum hung,' 
IjO ! a cross of silver swung. 

Well she knew its graven sign, 
Squando's bird and totem pine; 
And, a mirage of the brain, 
Flowed her childhood back again. 

Flashed the roof the sunshine through, 
Into space the walls outgrew; 191 

On the Indian's wigwam-mat, 
Blossom-crowned, again she sat. 

Cool she felt the west-wind blow. 
In her ear the pines sang low, 
And, like links from out a chain, 
Dropped the years of care and pain. 

From the outward toil and din, 
From the griefs that gnaw within, 
To the freedom of the woods 200 

Called the birds, and winds, and 
floods. 

Well, O painful minister ! 

Watch thy flock, but blame not her. 

If her ear grew sharp to hear 

All their voices whispering near. 

Blame her not, as to her soul 
All the desert's glamour stole. 
That a tear for childhood's loss 
Dropped upon the Indian's cross. 

When, that night, the Book was read. 
And she bowed her widowed head, 211 
And a prayer for each loved name 
Rose like incense from a flame, 

With a hope the creeds forbid 
In her pitying bosom hid. 
To the listening ear of Heaven 
Lo ! the Indian's name was given. 



MY PLAYMATE 

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 
Their song was soft and low; 

The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
Were falling like the snow. 

The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
The orchard birds sang clear; 



94 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The sweetest and the saddest day 
It seemed of all the year. 

For, more to me than birds or flowers, 
My playmate left her home, lo 

And took with her the laughing 
spring. 
The music and the bloom. 

She kissed the lips of kith and kin, 
She laid her hand in mine: 

What more could ask the bashful 
boy 
Who fed her father's kine ? 

She left us in the bloom of May: 
The constant years told o'er 

Their seasons with as sweet May 
morns. 
But she came back no more. 20 

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round 

Of uneventful years; 
Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring 

And reap the autumn ears. 

She lives where all the golden year 

Her summer roses blow; 
The dusky children of the sun 

Before her come and go. 

There haply with her jewelled hands 
She smooths her silken gown, — 30 

No more the homespun lap wherein 
I shook the walnuts down. 

The wild grapes wait us by the brook, 
The brown nuts on the hill. 

And still the May-day flowers make 
sweet 
The woods of Follymill. 

The lilies blossom in the pond. 
The bird builds in the tree. 

The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill 
The slow song of the sea. 40 

I wonder if she thinks of them, 
And how the old time seems, — 

If ever the pines of Ramoth wood 
Are sounding in her dreams. 

I see her face, I hear her voice; 

Does she remember mine? 
And what to her is now the boy 

Who fed her father's kine ? 



What cares she that the orioles build 
For other eyes than ours, — so 

That other hands with nuts are filled, 
And other laps with flowers ? 

O playmate in the golden time ! 

Our mossy seat is green, 
Its fringing violets blossom yet, 

The old trees o'er it lean. 

The winds so sweet with birch and 
fern 

A sweeter memory blow; 
And there in spring the veeries sing 

The song of long ago. 60 

And still the pines of Ramoth wood 
Are moaning like the sea, — 

The moaning of the sea of change 
Between myself and thee ! 



COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION 

The beaver cut his timber 
With patient teeth that day, 

The minks were fish-wards, and the 
crows 
Surveyors of highway, — 

When Keezar sat on the hillside 

Upon his cobbler's form, 
With a pan of coals on either hand 

To keep his waxed-ends warm. 

And there, in the golden weather. 
He stitched and hammered and 
sung; 10 

In the brook he moistened his leather, 
In the pewter mug his tongue. 

Well knew the tough old Teuton 
Who brewed the stoutest ale, 

And he paid the goodwife's reckon- 
ing 
In the coin of song and tale. 

The songs they still are singing 
Who dress the hills of vine. 

The tales that haunt the Brocken 
And whisper down the Rhine. so 

Woodsy and wild and lonesome. 
The swift stream wound away. 

Through birches and scarlet maples 
Flashing in foam and spray, — 



COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION 



95 



Down on the sharp-horned ledges 
Plunging in steep cascade, 

Tossing its white-maned waters 
Against the hemlock's shade. 

Woodsy and wild and lonesome, 29 
East and west and north and south; 

Only the village of fishers 
Down at the river's mouth; 



Only here and there a clearing, 
With its farm-house rude 



and 



new. 
And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, 
Where the scanty harvest grew. 

No shout of home-bound reapers, 
No vintage-song he heard, 

And on the green no dancing feet 
The merry violin stirred. 40 

"Why should folk be glum," said 
Keezar, 

"When Nature herself is glad. 
And the painted woods are laughing 

At the faces so sour and sad?" 

Small heed had the careless cobbler 
What sorrow of heart was theirs 
Who travailed in pain with the births 
of God, 
And planted a state with prayers, — 

Hunting of witches and warlocks, 
Smiting the heathen horde, — 50 

One hand on the mason's trowel, 
And one on the soldier's sword ! 

But give him his ale and cider, 
Give him his pipe and song. 

Little he cared for Church or State, 
Or the balance of right and wrong. 

" 'T is work, work, work," he mut- 
tered, — 

" And for rest a snuffle of psalms ! " 
He smote on his leathern apron 

With his brown and waxen palms. 60 

" Oh for the purple harvests 
Of the days when I was young ! 

For the merry grape-stained maidens. 
And the pleasant songs they sung ! 

" Oh for the breath of vineyards, 
Of apples and nuts and wine ! 



For an oar to row and a breeze to blow 
Down the grand old river Rhine ! " 

A tear in his blue eye ghstened, 
And dropped on his beard so gray. 70 

" Old, old am I," said Keezar, 

" And the Rhine flows far away ! " 

But a cunning man was the cobbler; 
He could call the birds from the 
trees, 
Charm the black snake out of the 
ledges. 
And bring back the swarming bees. 

All the virtues of herbs and metals. 

All the lore of the woods, he knew. 
And the arts of the Old World min- 
gled 
With the marvels of the New. 80 

Well he knew the tricks of magic, 
And the lapstone on his knee 

Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles 
Or the stone of Doctor Dee. 

For the mighty master Agrippa 
Wrought it with spell and rhymxC 

From a fragment of mystic moonstone 
In the tower of Netesheim. 

To a cobbler Minnesinger 

The marvellous stone gave he, — 90 
And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar, 

Who brought it over the sea. 

He held up that mystic lapstone, 

He held it up like a lens, 
And he counted the long years coming 

By twenties and by tens. 

"One hundred years," quoth Keezar, 

"And fifty have I told: 
Now open the new before me. 

And shut me out the old ! " 100 

Like a cloud of mist, the blackness 
RoUed from the magic stone, 

And a marveflous picture mingled 
The unknown and the known. 

Still ran the stream to the river, 
And river and ocean joined; 

And there were the bluffs and the blue 
sea-line, 
And cold north hills behind. 



96 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



But the mighty forest was broken 
By many a steepled town, no 

By many a white-walled farm-house, 
And many a garner brown. 

Turning a score of mill-wheels. 
The stream no more ran free; 

White sails on the winding river, 
White sails on the far-off sea. 

Below in the noisy village 
The flags were floating gay. 

And shone on a thousand faces 

The light of a holiday. 120 

Swiftly the rival ploughmen 

Turned the brown earth from their 
shares ; 
Here were the farmer's treasures. 

There were the craftman's wares. 

Golden the goodwife's butter. 

Ruby her currant- wine; 
Grand were the strutting turkeys. 

Fat were the beeves and swine. 

Yellow and red were the apples. 
And the ripe pears russet-brown, 130 

And the peaches had stolen blushes 
From the girls who shook them 
down. 

And with blooms of hill and wild wood, 
That shame the toil of art. 

Mingled the gorgeous blossoms 
Of the garden's tropic heart. 

" What is it I see ? " said Keezar: 
" Am I here, or am I there ? 

Is it a fete at Bingen ? 

Do I look on Frankfort fair? 140 

" But where are the clowns and pup- 
pets, 

And imps with horns and tail ? 
And where are the Rhenish flagons ? 

And where is the foaming ale ? 

"Strange things, I know, will hap- 
pen, — 

Strange things the Lord permits; 
But that droughty folk should be jolly 

Puzzles my poor old wits. 

" Here are smiling manly faces, 

And the maiden's step is gay; 150 



Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by 
drinking, 
Nor mopes, nor fools, are they. 

"Here's pleasure without regretting. 

And good without abuse, 
The holiday and the bridal 

Of beauty and of use. 

" Here 's a priest and there is a Quaker, 

Do the cat and dog agree ? 
Have they burned the stocks for oven- 
wood? 
Have they cut down the gallows- 
tree ? 1 60 

" Would the old folk know their chil- 
dren ? 

Would they own the graceless town, 
With never a ranter to worry 

And never a witch to drown?" 

Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar, 
Laughed like a school-boy gay; 

Tossing his arms above him, 
The lapstone rolled away. 

It rolled down the rugged hillside. 
It spun like a wheel bewitched, 170 

It plunged through the leaning wil- 
lows. 
And into the river pitched. 

There, in the deep, dark water, 

The magic stone lies still, 
Under the leaning willows 

In the shadow of the hill. 

But oft the idle fisher 

Sits on the shadowy bank. 

And his dreams make marvellous pic- 
tures 179 
Where the wizard's lapstone sank. 

And still, in the summer twilights, 
When the river seems to run 

Out from the inner glory, 
Warm with the melted sun, 

The weary mill-girl lingers 
Beside the charmed stream, 

And the sky and the golden water 
Shape and color her dream. 

Fair wave the sunset gardens, 

The rosy signals fly; 190 



AMY WENTWORTH 



97 



Her homestead beckons from the 
cloud, 
And love goes sailing by. 

AMY WENTWORTH 

TO WILLIAM BRADFORD 

As they who watch by sick-beds find 
relief 

Unwittingly from the great stress of 
grief 

And anxious care, in fantasies out- 
wrought 

From the hearth's embers flickering 
low, or caught 

From whispering wind, or tread of 
passing feet. 

Or vagrant memory calling up some 
sweet 

Snatch of old song or romance, whence 
or why 

They scarcely know or ask, — so, thou 
and I, 

Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is 
strong 

In the endurance which outwearies 
Wrong, lo 

With meek persistence baffling brutal 
force. 

And trusting God against the uni- 
verse, — 

We, doomed to watch a strife we may 
not share 

With other weapons than the patriot's 
prayer, 

Yet owning, with full hearts and 
moistened eyes. 

The awful beauty of self-sacrifice, 

And wrung by keenest sympathy for 
all 

Who give their loved ones for the liv- 
ing wall 

'Twixt law and treason, — in this evil 
day 

May haply find, through automatic 
play 20 

Of pen and pencil, solace to our 
pain, 

And hearten others with the strength 
we gain. 

I know it has been said our times re- 
quire 

No play of art, nor dalliance with the 
lyre, 



No weak essay with Fancy's chloro- 
form 
To calm the hot, mad pulses of the 

storm, 
But the stern war-blast rather, such as 

sets 
The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, 
And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet 

with these 
Some softer tints may blend, and 

milder keys 30 

Relieve the storm-stunned ear. Let 

us keep sweet. 
If so we may, our hearts, even while 

we eat 
The bitter harvest of our own device 
And half a century's moral cowardice. 
As Niirnberg sang while Wittenberg 

defied. 
And Kranach painted by his Luther's 

side. 
And through the war-march of the 

Puritan 
The silver stream of Marvell's music 

ran. 
So let the household melodies be sung, 
The pleasant pictures on the wall be 

hung, — 40 

So let us hold against the hosts of 

night 
And slavery all our vantage-ground of 

light. 
Let Treason boast its savagery, and 

shake 
From its flag-folds its symbol rattle- 
snake. 
Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in 

tan. 
And carve its pipe-bowls from the 

bones of man. 
And make the tale of Fijian banquets 

dull 
By drinking whiskey from a loyal 

skull, — 
But let us guard, till this sad war shall 

cease, 
(God grant it soon !) the graceful arts 

of peace: so 

No foes are conquered who the victors 

teach 
Their vandal manners and barbaric 

speech. 
And while, with hearts of thankful- 
ness, we bear 
Of the great common burden our full 

share, 



98 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Let none upbraid us that the waves 

entice 
Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint 

device, 
Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen 

away 
From the sharp strifes and sorrows of 

to-day. 
Thus, while the east-wind keen from 

Labrador 
Sings in the leafless elms, and from the 

shore 60 

Of the great sea comes the monoto- 
nous roar 
Of the long-breaking surf, and all the 

sky 
Is gray with cloud, home-bound and 

dull, I try 
To time a simple legend to the sounds 
Of winds in the woods, and waves on 

pebbled bounds, — 
A song for oars to chime with, such as 

might 
Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at 

night 
Look from their hemlock camps, by 

quiet cove 
Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves 

they love. 
(So hast thou looked, when level sun- 
set lay 70 
On the calm bosom of some Eastern 

bay, 
And all the spray-moist rocks and 

waves that rolled 
Up the white sand-slopes flashed with 

ruddy gold.) 
Something it has — a flavor of the 

sea, 
And the sea's freedom — which re- 
minds of thee. 
Its faded picture, dimly smiling 

down 
From the blurred fresco of the ancient 

town, 
I have not touched with warmer tints 

in vain. 
If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one 

thought from pain. 



Her fingers shame the ivory keys 
They dance so light along; 

The bloom upon her parted lips 
Is sweeter than the song. 



80 



O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles ! 

Her thoughts are not of thee; 
She better loves the salted wind, 

The voices of the sea. 

Her heart is like an outbound ship 
That at its anchor swings; 

The murmur of the stranded shell 90 
Is in the song she sings. 

She sings, and, smiling, hears her 
praise, 

But dreams the while of one 
Who watches from his sea-blown deck 

The icebergs in the sun. 

She questions all the winds that blow. 
And every fog-wreath dim, 

And bids the sea-birds flying north 
Bear messages to him. 

Shegspeeds them with the thanks of 
men 100 

He perilled life to save. 
And grateful prayers like holy oil 

To smooth for him the wave. 

Brown Viking of the fishing-smack ! 

Fair toast of all the town ! — 
The skipper's jerkin ill beseems 

The lady's silken gown! 

But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear 
For him the blush of shame 

Who dares to set his manly gifts no 
Against her ancient name. 

The stream is brightest at its spring. 
And blood is not like wine; 

Nor honored less than he who heirs 
Is he who founds a line. 

Full lightly shall the prize be won, 

If love be Fortune's spur; 
And never maiden stoops to him 

Who lifts himself to her. 

Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street, 
With stately stairways worn 121 

By feet of old Colonial knights 
And ladies gentle-born. 

Still green about its ample porch 

The English ivy twines. 
Trained back to show in English oak 

The herald's craven signs. 



AMY VVENTWORTH 



99 



I 




" She looks across the harbor-bar 
To eee the white gulls tiy " 



And on her, from the wainscot old, 
Ancestral faces frown, — 129 

And this has worn the soldier's sword. 
And that the judge's gown. 

But, strong of will and proud as they, 
She walks the gallery floor 

As if she trod her sailor's deck 
By stormy Labrador ! 



The sweetbrier blooms on Kitteryside, 
And green are Elliot's bowers; 

Her garden is the pebbled beach, 
The mosses are her flowers. 

She looks across the harbor-bar 140 

To see the white gulls fly; 
His greeting from the Northern sea 

Is in their clanging cry. 



lOO 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



She hums a song, and dreams that he, 

As in its romance old, 
Shall homeward ride with silken sails 

And masts of beaten gold ! 

Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair. 
And high and low mate ill; 

But love has never known a law is© 
Beyond its own sweet will ! 



THE COUNTESS 

TO ELIAS WELD 

I KNOW not. Time and Space so inter- 
vene. 

Whether, still waiting with a trust se- 
rene, 

Thou bearest up thy fourscore years 
and ten. 

Or, called at last, art now Heaven's 
citizen; 

But, here or there, a pleasant thought 
of thee, 

Like an old friend, all day has been 
with me. 

The shy, still boy, for whom thy 
kindly hand 

Smoothed his hard pathway to the 
wonderland 

Of thought and fancy, in gray man- 
hood yet 

Keeps green the memory of his early 
debt. lo 

To-day, when truth and falsehood 
speak their words 

Through hot-lipped cannon and the 
teeth of swords, 

Listening with quickened heart and 
ear intent 

To each sharp clause of that stern 
argument, 

I still can hear at times a softer 
note 

Of the old pastoral music round me 
float, 

While through the hot gleam of our 
civil strife 

Looms the green mirage of a simpler 
life. 

As, at his alien post, the sentinel 

Drops the old bucket in the home- 
stead well, 20 

And hears old voices in the winds that 
toss 



Above his head the live-oak's beard of 
moss, 

So, in our trial-time, and under skies 

Shadowed by swords like Islam's para- 
dise, 

I wait and watch, and let my fancy 
stray 

To milder scenes and youth's Arca- 
dian day; 

And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in 
dreams 

Shades the brown woods or tints the 
sunset streams. 

The country doctor in the foreground 
seems, 

Whose ancient sulky down the village 
lanes 30 

Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills 
and pains. 

I could not paint the scenery of my 
song, 

Mindless of one who looked thereon so 
long; 

Who, night and day, on duty's lonely 
round. 

Made friends o' the woods and rocks, 
and knew the sound 

Of each small brook, and what the 
hillside trees 

Said to the winds that touched their 
leafy keys; 

Who saw so keenly and so well could 
paint 

The village-folk, with all their hu- 
mors quaint, — 

The parson ambling on his wall-eyed 
roan, 40 

Grave and erect, with white hair back- 
ward blown; 

The tough old boatman, half amphibi- 
ous grown; 

The muttering witch-wife of the gos- 
sip's tale. 

And the loud straggler levying his 
blackmail, — 

Old customs, habits, superstitions, 
fears, 

All that lies buried under fifty years. 

To thee, as is most fit, I bring my 
lay. 

And, grateful, own the debt I cannot 
pay- 



Over the wooded northern ridge, 

Between its houses brown, 50 1 



THE COUNTESS 



101 



To the dark tunnel of the l^ridge 
The street comes stragghng down. 

You catch a glimpse, through birch 
and pine, 

Of gable, roof, and porch, 
The tavern with its swinging sign, 

The sharp horn of the church. 

The river's steel-blue crescent curves 

To meet, in ebb and flow, 
The single broken wharf that serves 

For sloop and gundelow. 60 

With salt sea-scents along its shores 
The heavy hay-boats crawl, 

The long antennae of their oars 
In lazy rise and fall. 

Along the gray abutment's wall 

The idle shad-net dries; 
The toll-man in his cobbler's stall 

Sits smoking with closed eyes. 

You hear the pier's low undertone 
Of waves that chafe and gnaw; 70 

You start, — a skipper's horn is 
blown 
To raise the creaking draw. 

At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds 
With slow and sluggard beat, 

Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds 
Wakes up the staring street. 

A place for idle eyes and ears, 
A cobwebbed nook of dreams; 

Left by the stream whose waves are 
years 
The stranded village seems. 80 

And there, like other moss and rust. 

The native dweller clings. 
And keeps, in uninquiring trust, 

The old, dull round of things. 

The fisher drops his patient lines. 
The farmer sows his grain. 

Content to hear the murmuring 
pines 
Instead of railroad train. 

Go where, along the tangled steep 
That slopes against the west, 90 

The hamlet's buried idlers sleep 
In still profounder rest. 



Throw back the locust's flowery 
plume. 

The birch's pale-green scarf. 
And break the web of brier and bloom 

From name and epitaph. 

A simple muster-roll of death, 
Of pomp and romance shorn. 

The dry, old names that common 
breath 
Has cheapened and outworn. 100 

Yet pause by one low mound, and 
part 

The wild vines o'er it laced, 
And read the words by rustic art 

Upon its headstone traced. 

Haply yon white-haired villager 
Of fourscore years can say 

What means the noble name of her 
Who sleeps with common clay. 

An exile from the Gascon land 

Found refuge here and rest, no 

And loved, of all the village band. 
Its fairest and its best. 

He knelt with her on Sabbath morns, 
He worshipped through her eyes, 

And on the pride that doubts and 
scorns 
Stole in her faith's surprise. 

Her simple daily Hfe he saw 

By homeliest duties tried, 
In all things by an untaught law 

Of fitness justified. 120 

For her his rank aside he laid; 

He took the hue and tone 
Of lowly life and toil, and made 

Her simple ways his own. 

Yet still, in gay and careless ease. 

To harvest-field or dance 
He brought the gentle courtesies. 

The nameless grace of France. 

And she who taught him love not less 
From him she loved in turn 130 

Caught in her sweet unconsciousness 
What love is quick to learn. 

Each grew to each in pleased accord. 
Nor knew the gazing town 



I02 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



If she looked upward to her lord 
Or he to her looked down. 

How sweet, when summer's day was 
o'er, 
His violin's mirth and wail, 
The walk on pleasant Newbury's 
shore, 
The river's moonlit sail ! mo 

Ah! Ufe is brief, though love be long; 

The altar and the bier, 
The burial hymn and bridal song. 

Were both in one short year ! 

Her rest is quiet on the hill. 
Beneath the locust's bloom; 

Far off her lover sleeps as still 
Within his scutcheoned tomb. 

The Gascon lord, the village maid, 
In death still clasp their hands; 150 

The love that levels rank and grade 
Unites their severed lands. 

What matter whose the hillside grave, 
Or whose the blazoned stone ? 

Forever to her western wave 
Shall whisper blue Garonne ! 

O Love ! — so hallowing every soil 
That gives thy sweet flower room, 

Wherever, nursed by ease or toil, 
The human heart takes bloom ! — 

Plant of lost Eden, from the sod 161 

Of sinful earth vmriven. 
White blossom of the trees of God 

Dropped down to us from heaven ! — 

This tangled waste of mound and 
stone 

Is holy for thy sake; 
A sweetness which is all thy own 

Breathes out from fern and brake. 

And while ancestral pride shall twine 
The Gascon's tomb with flowers, 170 

Fall sweetly here, O song of mine, 
With summer's bloom and show- 
ers! 

And let the lines that severed seem 

Unite again in thee, 
As western wave and Gallic stream 

Are mingled in one sea ! 



AMONG THE HILLS 

PRELUDE 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of 
gold 

That tawny Incas for their gardens 
wrought, 

Heavy with sunshine droops the gol- 
den-rod, 

And the red pennons of the cardinal- 
flowers 

Hang motionless upon their upright 
staves. 

The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, 

Wing-weary with its long flight from 
the south, 

Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon 
maple leaf 

With faintest motion, as one stirs in 
dreams. 

Confesses it. The locust by the wall 10 

Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp 
alarm. 

A single hay-cart down the dusty road 

Creaks slowly, with its driver fast 
asleep 

On the load's top. Against the neigh- 
boring hill. 

Huddled along the stone wall's shady 
side, 

The sheep show white, as if a snow- 
drift still 

Defied the dog-star. Through the open 
door 

A drowsy smell of flowers — gray 
heliotrope, 

And white sweet clover, and shy mig- 
nonette — 

Comes faintly in, and silent chorus 
lends 20 

To the pervading symphony of peace. 

No time is this for hands long over- 
worn 

To task their strength: and (unto 
Him be praise 

Who giveth quietness !) the stress 
and strain 

Of years that did the work of cen- 
turies 

Have ceased, and we can draw our 
breath once more 

Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters 

Make glad their nooning underneath 
the elms 



\ 



AMONG THE HILLS 



103 



With tale and riddle and old snatch of 

song, 
I lay aside grave themes, and idly 

turn 30 

The leaves of memory's sketch-book, 

dreaming o'er 
Old summer pictures of the quiet hills, 
And human life, as quiet, at their feet. 

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, 
Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, 

and feeling 
All their fine possibilities, how rich 
And restful even poverty and toil 
Become when beauty, harmony, and 

love 
Sit at their humble hearth as angels 

sat 
At evening in the patriarch's tent, 

when man 40 

Makes labor noble, and his farmer's 

frock 
The symbol of a Christian chivalry 
Tender and just and generous to her 
Who clothes with grace all duty; still, 

I know 
Too well the picture has another 

side, — 
How wearily the grind of toil goes on 
Where love is wanting, how the eye 

and ear 
And heart are starved amidst the 

plentitude 
Of nature, and how hard and colorless 
Is life without an atmosphere. I look 
Across the lapse of half a century, si 
And call to mind old homesteads, 

where no flower 
Told that the spring had come, but 

evil weeds. 
Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock 

in the place 
Of the sweet doorway greeting of the 

rose 
And honeysuckle, where the house 

walls seemed 
Blistering in sun, without a tree or 

vine 
To cast the tremulous shadow of its 

leaves 
Across the curtainless windows, from 

whose panes 
Fluttered the signal rags of shiftless- 

ness. 60 

Within, the cluttered kitchen floor, 

unwashed 



(Broom-clean I think they called it); 
the best room 

Stifling with cellar-damp, shut from 
the air 

In hot midsummer, bookless, picture- 
less 

Save the inevitable sampler hung 

Over the fireplace, or a mourning 
piece, 

A green-haired woman, peony- 
cheeked, beneath 

Impossible willows; the wide-throated 
hearth 

Bristling with faded pine-boughs half 
concealing 

The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's 
back ; 70 

And, in sad keeping with all things 
about them. 

Shrill, querulous women, sour and 
sullen men. 

Untidy, loveless, old before their time, 

With scarce a human interest save 
their own 

Monotonous round of small econo- 
mies, 

Or the poor scandal of the neighbor- 
hood; 

Blind to the beauty everywhere re- 
vealed. 

Treading the May-flowers with re- 
gardless feet; 

For them the song-sparrow and the 
bobolink 

Sang not, nor winds made music in 
the leaves; 80 

For them in vain October's holocaust 

Burned, gold and crimson, over all the 
hills, 

The sacramental mystery of the 
woods. 

Church-goers, fearful of the unseen 
Powers, 

But grumbling over pulpit-tax and 
pew-rent. 

Saving, as shrewd economists, their 
souls 

And winter pork with the least pos- 
sible outlay 

Of salt and sanctity; in daily life 

Showing as little actual comprehen- 
sion 

Of Christian charity and love and 
duty, 90 

As if the Sermon on the Mount had 
been 



I04 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Outdated like a last year's almanac: 

Rich in broad woodlands and in half- 
tilled fields, 

And yet so pinched and bare and com- 
fortless, 

The veriest straggler limping on his 
rounds, 

The sun and air his sole inheritanoe, 

Laughed at a poverty that paid its 
taxes. 

And hugged his rags in self-compla- 
cency ! 

Not such should be the homesteads 

of a land 
Where whoso wisely wills and Acts 

may dwell » loo 

As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred 

state, 
With beauty, art, taste, culture, 

books, to make 
His hour of leisure richer than a life 
Of fourscore to the barons of old time. 
Our yeoman should be equal to his 

home 
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple 

walled, 
A man to match his mountains, not to 

creep 
Dwarfed and abased below them. I 

would fain 
In this light way (of which I needs 

must own 
With the knife-grinder of whom Can- 
ning sings, no 
" Story, God bless you ! I have none 

to tell you!") 
Invite the eye to see and heart to feel 
The beauty and the joy within their 

reach, — 
Home, and home loves, and the beati- 
tudes 
Of nature free to all. Haply in years 
That wait to take the places of our 

own. 
Heard where some breezy balcony 

looks down 
On happy homes, or where the lake in 

the moon 
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, 

fair as Ruth, 
In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the 

feet 1 20 

Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine 
May seem the burden of a prophecy. 
Finding its late fulfilment in a change 



Slow as the oak's growth, lifting man- 
hood up 

Through broader culture, finer man- I 
ners, love, ' 

And reverence, to the level of the 
hills. 

O Golden Age, whose light is of the 
dawn, 

And not of sunset, forward, not be- 
hind, 

Flood the new heavens and earth, and 
with thee bring 129 

All the old virtues, whatsoever things 

Are pure and honest and of good re- 
pute. 

But add thereto whatever bard has 
sung 

Or seer has told of when in trance and 
dream 

They saw the Happy Isles of pro- 
phecy ! 

Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth 
divide 

Between the right and wrong; but 
give the heart 

The freedom of its fair inheritance; 

Let the poor prisoner, cramped and 
starved so long, 

At Nature's table feast his ear and eye 

With joy and wonder; let all har- 
monies 140 

Of sound, form, color, motion, wait 
upon 

The princely guest, whether in soft 
attire 

Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of 
toil, 

And, lending life to the dead form of 
faith. 

Give human nature reverence for the 
sake 

Of One who bore it, making it divine 

With the ineffable tenderness of God; 

Let common need, the brotherhood of 
prayer, 

The heirship of an unknown destiny. 

The unsolved mystery round about us, 
make 150 

A man more precious than the gold of 
Ophir. 

Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all 
things 

Should minister, as outward types and 
signs 

Of the eternal beauty which fulfils 



AMONG THE HILLS 



105 




And once again Chocorua's horn 
Of shadow pierced the water." 



The one great purpose of creation, Love, 
The sole necessity of Earth and Hea- 
ven! 



For weeks the clouds had raked the 
hills 

And vexed the vales with raining, 
And all the woods were sad with mist, 

And all the brooks complaining. 160 

At last, a sudden night-storm tore 
The mountain veils asunder. 

And swept the valleys clean before 
The besom of the thunder. 



Through Sandwich notch the west- 
wind sang 

Good morrow to the cotter; 
And once again Chocorua's horn 

Of shadow pierced the water. 

Above his broad lake Ossipee, 

Once more the sunshine wear- 
ing, 170 

Stooped, tracing on that silver shield 
His grim armorial bearing. 

Clear drawn against the hard blue 
sky. 
The peaks had winter's keenness; 



:o6 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And, close on autumn's frost, the vales 
Had more than June's fresh green- 
ness. 

Again the sodden forest floors 

With golden lights were checkered, 

Once more rejoicing leaves in wind 179 
And sunshine danced and flickered. 

It was as if the summer's late 

Atoning for its sadness 
Had borrowed every season's charm 

To end its days in gladness. 

I call to mind those banded vales 
Of shadow and of shining, 

Through which, my hostess at my side, 
I drove in day's dechning. 

We held our sideling way above 

The river's whitening shallows, 190 
By homesteads old, with wide-flung 
barns 
Swept through and through by 
swallows; 

By maple orchards, belts of pine 
And larches climbing darkly 

The mountain slopes, and, over all, 
The great peaks rising starkly. 

You should have seen that long hill- 
range 
With gaps of brightness riven, — 
How through each pass and hollow 
streamed 
The purpling lights of heaven, — 200 

Rivers of gold-mist flowing down 
From far celestial fountains, — 

The great sun flaming through the rifts 
Beyond the wall of mountains ! 

We paused at last where home-bound 
cows 
Brought down the pasture's trea- 
sure. 
And in the barn the rhythmic flails 
Beat out a harvest measure. 

We heard the night-hawk's sullen 
plunge. 
The crow his tree-mates calling: 210 
The shadows lengthening down the 
slopes 
About our feet were falling. 



And through them smote the level sun 
In broken lines of splendor, 

Touched the gray rocks and made the 
green 
Of the shorn grass more tender. 

The maples bending o'er the gate. 
Their arch of leaves just tinted 

With yellow warmth, the golden glow 
Of coming autumn hinted. 220 

Keen white between the farm-house 
showed. 

And smiled on porch and trellis, 
The fair democracy of flowers 

That equals cot and palace. 

And weaving garlands for her dog, 
'Twixt chidings and caresses, 

A human flower of childhood shook 
The sunshine from her tresses 

On either hand we saw the signs 
Of fancy and of shrewdness, 230 

Where taste had wound its arms of vines 
Round thrift's uncomely rudeness. 

The sun-brown farmer in his frock 
Shook hands, and called to Mary: 

Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came, 
White-aproned from her dairy. 

Her air, her smile, her motions, told 
Of womanly completeness; 

A music as of household songs 

Was in her voice of sweetness. 240 

Not fair alone in curve and line. 
But something more and better, 

The secret charm eluding art. 
Its spirit, not its letter; — 

An inborn grace that nothing lacked 
Of culture or appliance. — 

The warmth of genial courtesy, 
The calm of self-reliance. 

Before her queenly womanhood 

How dared our hostess utter 250 

The paltry errand of her need 

To buy her fresh-churned butter? 

She led the way with housewife pride, 
Her goodly store disclosing. 

Full tenderly the golden balls 
With practised hands disposing. 



AMONG THE HILLS 



107 



Then, while along the western hills 
We watched the changeful glory 

Of sunset, on our homeward way, 
I heard her simple story. 260 

The early crickets sang; the stream 
Plashed through my friend's narra- 
tion : 

Her rustic patois of the hills 
Lost in my free translation. 

" More wise," she said, " than those 
who swarm 
Our hills in middle summer. 
She came, when June's first roses 
blow. 
To greet the early comer. 

" From school and ball and rout she 
came, 

The city's fair, pale daughter, 270 
To drink the wine of mountain air 

Beside the Bearcamp Water. 

" Her step grew firmer on the hills 
That watch our homesteads over; 

On cheek and lip, from summer fields, 
She caught the bloom of clover. 

" For health comes sparkling in the 
streams 

From cool Chocorua stealing: 
There's iron in our Northern winds; 

Our pines are trees of healing. 280 

"She sat beneath the broad-armed 
elms 
That skirt the mowing meadow, 
And watched the gentle west-wind 
weave 
The grass with shine and shadow. 

" Beside her, from the summer heat 
To share her grateful screening, 

With forehead bared, the farmer stood. 
Upon his pitchfork leaning. 

" Framed in its damp, dark locks, his 
face 289 

Had nothing mean or common, — 
Strong, manly, true, the tenderness 

And pride beloved of woman. 

"She looked up, glowing with the 
health 
The country air had brought her, 



And, laughing, said ; ' You lack a wife. 
Your mother lacks a daughter. 

'"To mend your frock and bake your 
bread 

You do not need a lady : 
Be sure among these brown old homes 

Is some one waiting ready, — 300 

"'Some fair, sweet girl with skilful 
hand 

And cheerful heart for treasure. 
Who never played with ivory keys. 

Or danced the polka's measure.' 

" He bent his black brows to a frown, 
He set his white teeth tightly. 

' 'Tis well,' he said, ' for one like you 
To choose for me so lightly. 

" ' You think because my life is rude 
I take no note of sweetness: 310 

I tell you love has naught to do 
With meetness or unmeetness. 

'• Itself its best excuse, it asks 
No leave of pride or fashion 

When silken zone or homespun frock 
It stirs with throbs of passion. 

" ' You think me deaf and blind : you 
bring 

Your winning graces hither 
As free as if from cradle-time 

We two had played together. 320 

" ' You tempt me with your laughing 
eyes. 

Your cheek of sundown's blushes, 
A motion as of waving grain, 

A music as of thrushes. 

"'The plaything of your summer 
sport. 

The spells you weave around me 
You cannot at your will undo. 

Nor leave me as you found me. 

" ' You go as lightly as you came. 
Your hfe is well without me; 330 

What care you that these hills will 
close 
Like prison-walls about me ? 

" ' No mood is mine to seek a wife. 
Or daughter for my mother: 



io8 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Who loves you loses in that love 
All power to love another ! 

" ' I dare your pity or your scorn, 
With pride your own exceeding; 

I fling my heart into your lap 

Without a word of pleading.' 340 

" She looked up in his face of pain 

So archly, yet so tender: 
'And if I lend you mine,' she said, 

' Will you forgive the lender ? 

" ' Nor frock nor tan can hide the 
man; 

And see you not, my farmer, 
How weak and fond a woman waits 

Behind the silken armor ? 

"'I love you: on that love alone. 
And not my worth, presuming, 350 

Will you not trust for summer fruit 
The tree in May-day blooming ? ' 

" Alone the hangbird overhead, 
His hair-swung cradle straining. 

Looked down to see love's miracle, — 
The giving that is gaining. 

" And so the farmer found a wife. 
His mother found a daughter: 

There looks no happier home than 
hers 
On pleasant Bearcamp Water. 360 

" Flowers spring to blossom where she 
walks 

The careful ways of duty; 
Our hard, stiff Unes of life with her 

Are flowing curves of beauty. 

" Our homes are cheerier for her 
sake. 

Our door-yards brighter blooming, 
And all about the social air 

Is sweeter for her coming. 

"■ Unspoken homilies of peace 

Her daily life is preaching; 370 

The still refreshment of the dew 
Is her unconscious teaching. 

" And never tenderer hand than hers 
ITnknits the brow of ailing; 

Her garments to the sick man's ear 
Have music in their trailing. 



" And when, in pleasant harvest 
moons. 

The youthful buskers gather, | 

Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways ' 

Defy the winter weather, — 380 



In 



when south and 



sugar-camps, 
warm 
The winds of March are blowing, 
And sweetly from its thawing veins 
The maple's blood is flowing, — 

" In summer, where some lilied pond 

Its virgin zone is baring. 
Or where the ruddy autumn fire 

Lights up the apple-paring, — 

" The coarseness of a ruder time 
Her finer mirth displaces, 390 

A subtler sense of pleasure fills 
Each rustic sport she graces. 

" Her presence lends its warmth and 
health 

To all who come before it. 
If woman lost us Eden, such 

As she alone restore it. 

" For larger life and wiser aims 

The farmer is her debtor; 
Who holds to his another's heart 

Must needs be worse or better. 400 

"Through her his civic service shows 

A purer-toned ambition; 
No double consciousness divides 

The man and politician. 

" In party's doubtful ways he trusts 
Her instincts to determine; 

At the loud polls, the thought of her 
Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon. 



" He owns her logic of the heart, 
And wisdom of unreason. 

Supplying, while he doubts 
weighs. 
The needed word in season. 



410 
and 



" He sees with pride her richer thought, 

Her fancy's freer ranges; 
And love thus deepened to respect 

Is proof against all changes. 

" And if she walks at ease in ways 
His feet are slow to travel. 



AMONG THE HILLS 



109 



And if she reads with cultured eyes 
What his may scarce unravel, 4 jo 

"Still clearer, for her keener sight 

Of beauty and of wonder. 
He learns the meaning of the hills 

He dwelt from childhood under. 

" And higher, warmed with summer 
lights, 

Or winter-crowned and hoary. 
The ridged horizon lifts for him 

Its inner veils of glory. 

" He has his own free, bookless lore, 
The lessons nature taught him, 430 

The wisdom which the woods and 
hills 
And toiling men have brought him : 

" The steady force of will whereby 
Her flexile grace seems sweeter; 

The sturdy counterpoise which makes 
Her woman's life completer; 

" A latent fire of soul whicli laclvS 
No breath of love to fan it; 

And wit, that, like his native brooks 
Plays over solid granite. 440 

"How dwarfed against his manli- 
ness 

She sees the poor pretension, 
The wants, the aims, the follies, born 

Of fashion and convention ! 

" How life behind its accidents 
Stands strong and self-sustaining, 

The human fact transcending all 
The losing and the gaining. 

" And so in grateful interchange 
Of teacher and of hearer, 4So 

Their lives their true distinctness keep 
While daily drawing nearer. 

" And if the husband or the wife 
In home's strong light discovers 

Such slight defaults as failed to meet 
The blinded eyes of lovers, 

" Why need we care to ask ? — who 
dreams 

Without their thorns of roses, 
Or wonders that the truest steel 

The readiest spark discloses ? 460 



" For still in mutual sufferance lies 

The secret of true living; 
Love scarce is love that never knows 

The sweetness of forgiving. 

"We send the Squire to General 
Court, 
He takes his young wife thither; 
No prouder man election day 

Rides through the sweet June 
weather. 

" He sees with eyes of manly trust 
All hearts to her inclining; 470 

Not less for him his household light 
That others share its shining." 

Thus, while my hostess spake, there 
grew 

Before me, warmer tinted 
And outlined with a tenderer grace. 

The picture that she hinted. 

The sunset smouldered as we drove 
Beneath the deep hill-shadows. 

Below us wreaths of white fog walked 
Like ghosts the haunted meadows. 

Sounding the summer night, the 
stars 481 

Dropped down their golden plum- 
mets; 
The pale arc of the Northern lights 
Rose o'er the mountain summits, 

Until, at last, beneath its bridge. 
We heard the Bearcamp flowing. 

And saw across the mapled lawn 
The welcome home-lights glowing. 

And, musing on the tale I heard, 
'T were well, thought I, if often 490 

To rugged farm-life came the gift 
To harmonize and soften; 

If more and more we found the 
troth 
Of fact and fancy plighted, 
And culture's charm and labor's 
strength 
In rural liomes united, — 

The simple life, the homely hearth. 
With beauty's sphere surrounding. 

And blessing toil where toil al)Ounds 
With graces more abounding. soo 



I lO 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL 

The land was pale with famine 
And racked with fever-pain; 

The frozen fiords were fishless, 
The earth withheld her grain. 

Men saw the boding Fylgja 
Before them come and go, 

And, through their dreams, the Ur- 
darmoon 
From west to east sailed slow ! 

Jarl Thorkell of Thevera 

At Yule-time made his vow; lo 

On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone 

He slew to Frey his cow. 

To bounteous Frey he slew her; 

To Skuld, the younger Norn, 
Who watches over birth and death, 

He gave her calf unborn. 

And his little gold-haired daughter 
Took up the sprinkling-rod, 

And smeared with blood the temple 
And the wide lips of the god. 20 

Hoarse below, the winter water 

Ground its ice blocks o'er and o'er; 

Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves. 
Rose and fell along the shore. 



The red torch of the Jokul, 

Aloft in icy space, 
Shone down on the bloody 
stones 

And the statue's carven face. 



Horg- 



And closer round and grimmer 

Beneath its baleful light .sc 

The Jotun shapes of mountains 
Came crowding through the night. 

The gray-haired Hersir trembled 
As a flame by wind is blown; 

A weird power moved his white lips, 
And their voice was not his own! 

" The JE&\T thirst ! " he muttered ; 

" The gods must have more blood 
Before the tun shall blossom 

Or fish shall fill the flood. 4< 

"The iEsir thirst and hunger. 
And hence our blight and ban; 



The mouths of the strong gods water 
For the flesh and blood of man ! 

" Whom shall we give the strong 
ones ? 

Not warriors, sword on thigh; 
But let the nursling infant 

And bedrid old man die." 

" So be it ! " cried the young men, 
" There needs nor doubt nor parle." 

But, knitting hard his red brows, si 
In silence stood the Jarl. 

A sound of woman's weeping 
At the temple door was heard. 

But the old men bowed their white 
heads. 
And answered not a word. 

Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla, 

A Vala young and fair. 
Sang softly, stirring with her breath 

The veil of her loose hair. 60 

She sang: "The winds from Alfheim 
Bring never sound of strife; 

The gifts for Frey the meetest 
Are not of death, but life. 

" He loves the grass-green meadows, 
The grazing kine's sweet breath; 

He loathes your bloody Horg-stones, 
Your gifts that smell of death. 

" No wrong by wrong is righted, 
No pain is cured by pain; 70 

The blood that smokes from Doom- 
rings 
Falls back in redder rain. 

"The gods are wliat you make them. 
As earth shall Asgard prove; 

And hate will come of hating, 
And love will come of love. 

" Make dole of skyr and black bread 
Tliat old and young may live; 

And look to Frey for favor 

When first like Frey you give. 80 

"Even now o'er Njord's sea-mead- 
ows 

The summer dawn begins: 
The tun shall have its harvest, 

The fiord its glancing fins." 



THE TWO RABBINS 



III 



Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell : 

" By Gimli and by Hel, 
O Vala of Thingvalla, 

Thou singest wise and well ! 

" Too dear the ^sir's favors 

Bought with our children's lives; 90 

Better die than shame in living 
Our mothers and our wives. 

" The full shall give his portion 
To him who hath most need; 

Of curdled skyr and black bread, 
Be daily dole decreed." 

He broke from ofT his neck-chain 
Three links of beaten gold; 

And each man, at his bidding, 

Brought gifts for young and old. 100 

Then mothers nursed their children, 
And daughters fed their sires, 

And Health sat down with Plenty 
Before the next Yule fires. 

The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal; 

The Doom-ring still remains; 
But the snows of a thousand winters 

Have washed away the stains. 

Christ ruleth now; the ^Esir 

Have found their twilight dim; no 

And, wiser than she dreamed, of old 
The Vala sang of Him 1 



THE TWO RABBINS 

The Rabbi Nathan twoscore years 

and ten 
Walked blameless through the evil 

world, and then. 
Just as the almond blossomed in his 

hair. 
Met a temptation all too strong to 

bear. 
And miserably sinned. So, adding not 
Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and 

taught 
No more among the elders, but went 

out 
From the great congregation girt about 
With sackcloth, and with ashes on his 

head. 
Making his gray locks grayer. Long he 

prayed, 10 



Smiting his breast; then, as the Book 

he laid 
Open before him for the Bath-Col's 

choice, 
Pausing to hear that Daughter of a 

Voice, 
Behold the royal preacher's words: 

'' A friend 
Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end; 
And for the evil day thy brother 

lives." 
Marvelhng, he said: "It is the Lord 

who gives 
Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells 
Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels 
In righteousness and wisdom, as the 

trees 20 

Of Lebanon the small weeds that the 

bees 
Bow with their weight. I will arise, 

and lay 
My sins before him." 

And he went his way 

Barefooted, fasting long, with many 
prayers; 

But even as one who, followed un- 
awares, 

Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand 

Thrill with its touch his own, and his 
cheek fanned 

By odors subtly sweet, and whispers 
near 

Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose 
but hear. 

So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chant- 
ing low 30 

The wail of David's penitential woe, 

Before him still the old temptation 
came. 

And mocked him with the motion and 
the shame 

Of such desires that, shuddering, he 
abhorred 

Himself; and, crying mightily to the 
Lord 

To free his soul and cast the demon 
out, 

Smote with his staff the blankness 
round about. 

At length, in the low light of a spent 

day. 
The towers of Ecbatana far away 
Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, 

faint 40 



112 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And footsore, pausing where for some 

dead saint 
The faith of Islam reared a domed 

tomb, 
Saw some one kneehng in the shadow, 

whom 
He greeted kindly: "May the Holy 

One 
Answer thy prayers, O stranger!" 

whereupon 
The shape stood up with a loud cry, 

and then, 
Clasped in each other's arms, the two 

gray men 
Wept, praising Him whose gracious 

providence 
Made their paths one. But straight- 
way, as the sense 
Of his transgression smote him, Na- 
than tore 50 
Himself away: "O friend beloved, no 

more 
Worthy am I to touch thee, for I 

came. 
Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my 

shame. 
Haply thy prayers, since naught avail- 

eth mine. 
May purge my soul, and make it white 

like thine. 
Pity me, O Ben Isaac, I have sinned ! " 

Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The des- 
ert wind 

Blew his long mantle backward, laying 
bare 

The mournful secret of his shirt of 
hair. 

"I too, O friend, if not in act," he 
said, 60 

" In thought have verily sinned. Hast 
thou not read, 

'Better the eye should see than that 
desire 

Should wander ? ' Burning with a hid- 
den fire 

That tears and prayers quench not, I 
come to thee 

For pity and for help, as thou to me. 

Pray for me, O my friend ! " But Na- 
than cried, 

"Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!" 

Side by side 
In the low sunshine by the turban 
stone 



They knelt; each made his brother's 
woe his own, 

Forgetting, in the agony and stress 70 

Of pitying love, his claim of selfish- 
ness; 

Peace, for his friend besought, his own 
became; 

His prayers were answered in another's 
name; 

And, when at last they rose up to em- 
brace, 

Each saw God's pardon in his bro- 
ther's face ! 

Long after, when his headstone gath- 
ered moss, 

Traced on the targum-marge of On- 
kelos 

In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words 
were read: 

"Hope not the cure of sin till Self is 
dead; 

Forget it in love's service, and the 
debt 80 

Thou canst not pay the angels shall for- 
get; 

Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes 
alone; 

Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy 
own !" 



NOREMBEGA 

Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name 
given by early French fishermen and ex- 
plorers to a fabulous country south of Cape 
Breton, first discovered by Verrazzani in 
1524. It was supposed to' have a magnifi- 
cent citvof the same name on a great river, 
probably the Penobscot. The site of this 
barbaric citv is laid down on a map pub- 
lished at Antwerp in 1570. In 1604 Cham- 
plain sailed in search of the Northern El- 
dorado, twenty-two leagues up the Penob- 
scot from the Isle Haute. He supposed the 
river to be that of Norembega, but wisely 
came to the conclusion that those travellers 
who told of the great city had never seen 
it. He saw no evidences of anything like 
civilization, but mentions the finding of a 
cross, very old and mossy, in the woods. 

The winding way the serpent takes 

The mystic water took. 
From where, to count its beaded 
lakes, 

The forest sped its brook. 



NOREMBEGA 



113 



A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore 

For sun or stars to fall, 
While evermore, behind, before, 

Closed in the forest wall. 

The dim wood hiding underneath 
Wan flowers without a name; 10 

Life tangled with decay and death, 
League after league the same. 

Unbroken over swamp and hill 
The rounding shadow lay. 

Save where the river cut at will 
A pathway to the day. 

Beside that track of air and light. 
Weak as a child unweaned, 

At shut of day a Christian knight 
Upon his henchman leaned. 20 

The embers of the sunset's fires 
Along the clouds burned down; 

''I see," he said, "the domes and 
spires 
Of Norembega town." 

"Alack! the domes, O master mine. 
Are golden clouds on high ; 

Yon spire is but the branchless pine 
That cuts the evening sky." 

" Oh, hush and hark ! What sounds 
are these 
But chants and holy hymns?" 30 
" Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the 
trees 
Through all their leafy limbs." 

" Is it a chapel bell that fills 
The air with its low tone?" 

" Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills, 
The insect's vesper drone." 

" The Christ be praised ! — He sets for 
me 

A blessed cross in sight !" 
"Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree 

With two gaunt arms outright!" 40 

" Be it wind so sad or tree so stark. 
It mattereth not, my knave; 

Methinks to funeral hymns I hark. 
The cross is for my grave ! 

"My life is sped; I shall not see 
My home-set sails again; 



The sweetest eyes of Normandie 
Shall watch for me in vain. 

" Yet onward still to ear and eye 
The baffling marvel calls; 50 

I fain would look before I die 
On Norembega's walls. 

" So, haply, it shall be thy part 

At Christian feet to lay 
The mystery of the desert's heart 

My dead hand plucked away. 

" Leave me an hour of rest; go thou 
And look from yonder heights; 

Perchance the valley even now 

Is starred with ciiy lights." 60 

The henchman climbed the nearest 
hill. 
He saw nor tower nor town. 
But, through the drear woods, lone 
and still, 
The river rolling down. 

He heard the stealthy feet of things 
Whose shapes he could not see, 

A flutter as of evil wings. 
The fall of a dead tree. 

The pines stood black against the 
moon, 
A sword of fire beyond; 70 

He heard the wolf howl, and the 
loon 
Laugh from his reedy pond. 

He turned him back : " O master dear, 

We are but men misled; 
And thou hast sought a city here 

To find a grave instead." 

" As God shall will ! what matters 
where 

A true man's cross may stand, 
So Heaven be o'er it here as there 

In pleasant Norman land ? 80 

"These woods, perchance, no secret 
hide 

Of lordly tower and hall; 
Yon river in its wanderings wide 

Has washed no city wall; 

" Yet mirrored in the sullen stream 
The holy stars are given: 



114 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Is Norembega, then, a dream 
Whose waking is in Heaven ? 

" No builded wonder of these lands 
My weary eyes shall see; 90 

A city never made with hands 
Alone awaiteth me — 

" ' Urbs Syon mystica;' I see 

Its mansions passing fair, 
' Condita ccclo; ' let me be, 

Dear Lord, a dweller there ! " 

Above the dying exile hung 

The vision of the bard, 
As faltered on his failing tongue 

The song of good Bernard. 100 

The henchman dug at dawn a grave 
Beneath the hemlocks brown. 

And to the desert's keeping gave 
The lord of fief and town. 

Years after, when the Sieur Champlain 
Sailed up the unknown stream, 

And Norembega proved again 
A shadow and a dream. 

He found the Norman's nameless 
grave 

Within the hemlock's shade, no 
And, stretching wide its arms to save. 

The sign that God had made. 

The cross-boughed tree that marked 
the spot 

And made it holy ground: 
He needs the earthly city not 

Who hath the heavenly found. 



MIRIAM 

TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD 

The years are many since, in youth 
and hope, 

Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope 

We drew thick-studded with all favor- 
ing stars. 

Now, with gray beards, and faces 
seamed with scars 

From life's hard battle, meeting once 
again. 

We smile, half sadly, over dreams so 
vain; 



Knowing, at last, that it is not in man 

Who walketh to direct his steps, or 
plan 

His permanent house of life. Alike we 
loved 

The muses' haunts, and all our fancies 
moved 10 

To measures of old song. How since 
that day 

Our feet have parted from the path 
that lay 

So fair before us ! Rich, from lifelong 
search 

Of truth, within thy Academic porch 

Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of 
fact. 

Thy servitors the sciences exact; 

Still listening with thy hand on Na- 
ture's keys. 

To hear the Samian's spheral har- 
monies 

And rhythm of law. I, called from 
dream and song. 

Thank God ! so early to a strife so 
long, 20 

That, ere it closed, the black, abun- 
dant hair 

Of boyhood rested silver-sown and 
spare 

On manhood's temples, now at sunset- 
chime 

Tread with fond feet the path of morn- 
ing time. 

And if perchance too late I linger 
where 

The flowers have ceased to blow, and 
trees are bare. 

Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely 
blame 

The friend who shields his folly with 
thy name. 



One Sabbath day my friend and I, 
After the meeting, quietly 30 

Passed from the crowded village lanes, 
White with dry dust for lack of rains, 
And climbed the neighboring slope, 

with feet 
Slackened and heavy from the heat, 
Although the day was wellnigh done, 
And the low angle of the sun 
Along the naked hillside cast 
Our shadows as of giants vast. 
We reached, at length, the topmost 

swell. 



MIRIAM 



IIS 




Frederick A. P. Barnard 



Whence, either way, the green turf 

fell 40 

In terraces of nature down 
To fruit-hung orchards, and the town 
With white, pretenceless houses, tall 
Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing 

all. 
Huge mills whose windows had the 

look 
Of eager eyes that ill could brook 
The Sabbath rest. We traced the 

track 



Of the sea-seeking river back, 
Ghstening for miles above its mouth. 
Through the long valley to the south, 
And, looking eastward, cool to view. 
Stretched the illimitable blue 52 

Of ocean, from its curved coast-line; 
Sombred and still the warm sunshine 
Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach 
Of slumberous woods from hill to 

beach, — 
Slanted on walls of thronged retreats 
From city toil and dusty streets, 



ii6 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



On grassy blutf, and dune of sand, 
And rocky islands miles from land; 60 
Touched the far-glancing sails, and 

showed 
White lines of foam where long waves 

flowed 
Dumb in the distance. In the north. 
Dim through their misty hair, looked 

forth 
The space-dwarfed mountains to the 

sea, 
From mystery to mystery ! 

So, sitting on that green hill-slope. 
We talked of human life, its hope 
And fear, and unsolved doubts, and 

what 
It might have been, and yet was 

not. 70 

And, when at last the evening air 
Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer 
Ringing in steeples far below, 
We watched the people churchward 

go, 
Each to his place, as if thereon 
The true shekinah only shone; 
And my friend queried how it came 
To pass that they who owned the 

same 
Great Master still could not agree 
To worship Him in company. 80 

Then, broadening in his thought, he 

ran 
Over the whole vast field of man, — 
The varying forms of faith and creed 
That somehow served the holders' 

need; 
In which, unquestioned, undenied, 
Uncounted millions lived and died; 
The bibles of the ancient folk. 
Through which the heart of nations 

spoke; 
The old moralities which lent 
To home its sweetness and content, 90 
And rendered possible to bear 
The life of peoples everywhere: 
And asked if we, who boast of light. 
Claim not a too exclusive right 
To truths which must for all be meant. 
Like rain and sunshine freely sent. 
In bondage to the letter still, 
We give it power to cramp and kill, — 
To tax God's fulness with a scheme 
Narrower than Peter's house-top 

dream, 100 

His wisdom and his love with plans 



Poor and inadequate as man's. 
It must 1)6 that He witnesses 
Somehow to all men that He is: 
That something of His saving grace 
Reaches the lowest of the race, 
Who, through strange creed and rite, 

may draw 
The hints of a diviner law. 
We walk in clearer light; — but then, 
Is He not God ? — are they not men ? 
Are His responsibilities m 

For us alone and not for these ? 

And I made answer: " Truth is one; 
And, in all lands beneath the sun, 
Whoso hath eyes to see may see 
The tokens of its unity. 
No scroll of creed its fulness wraps. 
We trace it not by school-boy maps, 
Free as the sun and air it is 
Of latitudes and boundaries. 120 

In Vedic verse, in dull Koran, 
Are messages of good to man; 
The angels to our Aryan sires 
Talked by the earliest household 

fires; 
The prophets of the elder day, 
The slant-eyed sages of Cathay, 
Read not the riddle all amiss 
Of higher life evolved from this. 

" Nor doth it lessen what He taught, 
Or make the gospel Jesus brought 130 
Less precious, that His lips retold 
Some portion of that truth of old; 
Denying not the proven seers. 
The tested wisdom of the years; 
Confirming with His own impress 
The common law of righteousness. 
We search the world for truth; we 

cull 
The good, the pure, the beautiful, 
From graven stone and written scroll'. 
From all old flower-fields of the soul; 
And, weary seekers of the best, 141 
We come back laden from our quest, 
To find that all the sages said 
Is in the Book our mothers read. 
And all our treasure of old thought 
In His harmonious fulness wrought 
Who gathers in one sheaf complete 
The scattered blades of God's sown 

wheat, 
The common g^o\^i;h that maketh 

good 
His all-embracing Fatherhood. iso 



MIRIAM 



117 



" Wherever through the ages rise 
The altars of self-sacrifice, 
Where love its arms has opened 

wide, 
Or man for man has calmly died, 
I see the same white wings outspread 
That hovered o'er the Master's head ! 
Up from undated time they come, 
The martyr souls of heathendom, 
And to His cross and passion bring 
Their fellowship of suffering. 160 

I trace His presence in the blind 
Pathetic gropings of my kind, — 
In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung. 
In cradle-hymns of life they sung, 
Each, in its measure, but a part 
Of the unmeasured Over-heart; 
And with a stronger faith confess 
The greater that it owns the less. 
Good cause it is for thankfulness 
That the world- blessing of His life 170 
With the long past is not at strife; 
That the great marvel of His death 
To the one order witnesseth, 
No doubt of changeless goodness 

wakes, 
No link of cause and sequence breaks, 
But, one with nature, rooted is 
In the eternal verities; 
Whereby, while differing in degree 
As finite from infinity, 
The pain and loss for others borne, 180 
Love's crown of suffering meekly 

worn, 
The life man giveth for his friend 
Becomes vicarious in the end; 
Their healing place in nature take, 
And make life sweeter for their 

sake. 

" So welcome I from every source 
The tokens of that primal Force, 
Older than heaven itself, yet new 
As the young heart it reaches to, 
Beneath whose steady impulse rolls 
The tidal wave of human souls; 191 
Guide, comforter, and inward word. 
The eternal spirit of the Lord! 
Nor fear I aught that science brings 
From searching through material 

things; 
Content to let its glasses prove, 
Not by the letter's oldness move 
The myriad worlds on worlds that 

course 
The spaces of the universe; 



Since everywhere the Spirit walks 200 
The garden of the heart, and talks 
With man, as under Eden's trees, 
In all his varied languages. 
Why mourn above some hopeless flaw 
In the stone tables of the law. 
When scripture every day afresh 
Is traced on tablets of the flesh ? 
By inward sense, by outward signs, 
God's presence still the heart divines; 
Through deepest joy of Him we learn, 
In sorest grief to Him we turn, 211 
And reason stoops its pride to share 
The child-like instinct of a prayer." 

And then, as is my wont, I told 
A story of the days of old. 
Not found in printed books, — in 

sooth, 
A fancy, with slight hint of truth, 
Showing how difi'ering faiths agree 
In one sweet law of charity. 
Meanwhile the sky had golden grown. 
Our faces in its glory shone; 221 

But shadows down the valley swept. 
And gray below the ocean slept, 
As time and space I wandered o'er 
To tread the Mogul's marble floor. 
And see a fairer sunset fall 
On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall. 

The good Shah Akbar (peace be his 
alway !) 

Came forth from the Divan at close of 
day 

Bowed with the burden of his many 
cares, 230 

Worn with the hearing of unnum- 
bered prayers, — 

Wild cries for justice, the importu- 
nate 

Appeals of greed and jealousy and 
hate, 

And all the strife of sect and creed and 
rite, 

Senton and Gouroo waging holy fight : 

For the wise monarch, claiming not to 
be 

Allah's avenger, left his people free. 

With a faint hope, his Book scarce jus- 
tified. 

That all the paths of faith, though 
severed wide. 

O'er which the feet of prayerful rever- 
ence passed, 240 

Met at the gate of Paradise at last. 



ii8 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



He sought an alcove of his cool ha- 
reem, 

Where, far beneath, he heard the Jum- 
na's stream 

Lapse soft and low along his palace 
wall. 

And all about the cool sound of the 
fall 

Of fountains, and of water circling 
free 

Through marble ducts along the bal- 
cony; 

The voice of women in the distance 
sweet, 

And, sweeter still, of one who, at his 
feet, 

Soothed his tired ear with songs of a 
far land 250 

Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea- 
sand 

The mirror of its cork-grown hills of 
drouth 

And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor- 
mouth. 

The date-palms rustled not; the 
peepul laid 

Its topmost boughs against the bal- 
ustrade, 

Motionless as the mimic leaves and 
vines 

That, light and graceful as the shawl- 
designs 

Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone; 

And the tired monarch, who aside had 
thrown 

The day's hard burden, sat from care 
apart, 260 

And let the quiet steal into his heart 

From the still hour. Below him Agra 
slept 

By the long light of sunset overswept : 

The river flowing through a level land. 

By mango-groves and banks of yellow 
sand, 

Skirted with lime and orange, gay 
kiosks. 

Fountains at play, tall minarets of 
mosques. 

Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flow- 
ering trees 

Relieved against the mournful cy- 
presses; 

And, air-poised lightly as the blown 
sea-foam, 270 

The marble wonder of some holy dome 



Hung a white moonrise over the still 

wood. 
Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood. 

Silent the monarch gazed, until the 

niglit 
Swift-falling hid the city from his 

sight; 
Then to the woman at his feet he said : 
"Tell me, O Miriam, something thou 

hast read 
In childhood of the Master of thy 

faith. 
Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet 

saith : 
' He was a true apostle, yea, a Word 
And Spirit sent before me from the 

Lord.' 281 

Thus the Book witnesseth; and well I 

know 
By what thou art, O dearest, it is so. 
As the lute's tone the maker's hand 

betrays. 
The sweet disciple speaks her Master's 

praise." 

Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in 
some sort 

She cherished in the Moslem's liberal 
court 

The sweet traditions of a Christian 
child; 

And, through her life of sense, the un- 
defiled 

And chaste ideal of the sinless One 290 

Gazed on her with an eye she might 
not shun, — 

The sad, reproachful look of pity, born 

Of love that hath no part in wrath or 
scorn,) 

Began, with low voice and moist eyes, 
to tell 

Of the all-loving Christ, and what be- 
fell 

When the fierce zealots, thirsting for 
her blood. 

Dragged to his feet a shame of wo- 
manhood. 

How, when his searching answer 
pierced within 

Each heart, and touched the secret of 
its sin. 

And her accusers fled his face be- 
fore, 300 

He bade the poor one go and sin no 
more. 



I 



MIRIAM 



119 



And Akbar said, after a moment's 

thought, 
"Wise is the lesson by thy prophet 

taught; 
Woe unto him who judges and forgets 
What hidden evil his own heart besets! 
Something of this large charity I find 
In all the sects that sever humankind; 
I would to Allah that their lives 

agreed 
More nearly with the lesson of their 

creed ! 
Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut 

pray 310 

By wind and water power, and love to 

say: 
'He who forgiveth not shall, unfor- 

given. 
Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who 

even 
Spare the black gnat that stings them, 

vex my ears 
With the poor hates and jealousies and 

fears 
Nursed in their human hives. That 

lean, fierce priest 
Of thy own people, (be his heart in- 
creased 
By Allah's love!) his black robes 

smelling yet 
Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met 
Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the 

street 320 

The saying of his prophet true and 

sweet, — - 
'He who is merciful shall mercy 

meet!'" 

But, next day, so it chanced, as 

night began 
To fall, a murmur through the hareem 

ran 
That one, recalling in her dusky face 
The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a 

race 
Known as the blameless Ethiops of 

Greek song. 
Plotting to do her royal master wrong, 
Watching, reproachful of the lingering 

light. 
The evening shadows deepen for her 

flight, 330 

Love-guided, to her home in a far 

land. 
Now waited death at the great Shah's 

command. 



Shapely as that dark princess for 
whose smile 

A world was bartered, daughter of the 
Nile 

Herself, and veiling in her large, soft 
eyes 

The passion and the languor of her 
skies. 

The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet 

Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be 
meet. 

And for thy honor's sake," she said, 
"that I, 

Who am the humblest of thy slaves, 
should die, 34° 

I will not tax thy mercy to forgive. 

Easier it is to die than to outlive 

All that life gave me, — him whose 
wrong of thee 

Was but the outcome of his love for 
me. 

Cherished from childhood, when, be- 
neath the shade 

Of templed Axum, side by side we 
played. 

Stolen from his arms, my lover fol- 
lowed me 

Through weary seasons over land and 
sea; 

And two days since, sitting disconso- 
late 

Within the shadow of the hareem 
gate, 3SO 

Suddenly, as if dropping from the 
sky, 

Down from the lattice of the balcony 

Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cow- 
herds sung 

In the old music of his native tongue. 

He knew my voice, for love is quick of 
ear, 

Answering in song. 

This night he waited near 

To fly with me. The fault was mine 
alone: 

He knew thee not, he did but seek his 
own; 

Who, in the very shadow of thy 
throne. 

Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou 

art, 360 

Greatest and best of men, and in her 

heart 
Grateful to tears for favor undeserved, 
Turned ever homeward, nor one mo- 
ment swerved 



I20 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



From her young love. He looked into 

my eyes, 
He heard my voice, and could not 

otherwise 
Than he hath done; yet, save one wild 

embrace 
When first we stood together face to 

face, 
And all that fate had done since last 

we met 
Seemed but a dream and left us chil- 
dren yet. 
He hath not wronged thee nor thy 

royal bed: 370 

Spare him, O king ! and slay me in his 

stead!" 

But over Akbar's brows the frown 
hung black, 

And, turning to the eunuch at his 
back, 

"Take them," he said, ''and let the 
Jumna's waves 

Hide both my shame and these ac- 
cursed slaves!" 

His loathly length the unsexed bond- 
man bowed: 

"On my head be it!" 

Straightway from a cloud 

Of dainty shawls and veils of woven 
mist 

The Christian Miriam rose, and, stoop- 
ing, kissed 

The monarch's hand. Loose down her 
shoulders bare 380 

Swept all the rippled darkness of her 
hair. 

Veiling the bosom that, with high, 
quick swell 

Of fear and pity, through it rose and 
fell. 

" Alas 1 " she cried, " hast thou for- 
gotten quite 

The words of Him we spake of yester- 
night ? 

Or thy own prophet's, ' Whoso doth 
endure 

And pardon, of eternal life is sure' ? 

O great and good! be thy revenge 
alone 

Felt in thy mercy to the erring shown ; 

Let thwarted love and youth their 
pardon plead, 390 

Who sinned but in intent, and not in 
deed!" 



One moment the strong frame of 

Akbar shook 
With the great storm of passion. Then 

his look 
Softened to her uplifted face, that 

still 
Pleaded more strongly than all words, 

until 
Its pride and anger seemed like over- 
blown, 
Spent clouds of thunder left to tell 

alone 
Of strife and overcoming. With 

bowed head. 
And smiting on his bosom: " God," he 

said, 
" Alone is great, and let His holy name 
Be honored, even to His servant's 

shame! 401 

Well spake thy prophet, Miriam, — he 

alone 
Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a 

stone 
At such as these, who here their doom 

await. 
Held like myself in the strong grasp of 

fate. 
They sinned through love, as I 

through love forgive; 
Take them beyond my realm, but let 

them live!" 

And, like a chorus to the words of 

grace, 
The ancient fakir, sitting dn his place. 
Motionless as an idol and as grim, 410 
In the pavilion Akbar l)uilt for him 
Under the court-yard trees, (for he 

was wise. 
Knew Menu's laws, and through his 

close-shut eyes 
Saw things far off, and as an open 

book 
Into the thoughts of other men could 

look,) 
Began, half chant, half howling, to re- 
hearse 
The fragment of a holy Vedic verse; 
And thus it ran: " He who all things 

forgives 
Conquers himself and all things else, 

and lives 
Above the reach of wrong or hate or 

fear, 420 

Calm as the gods, to whom he is most 

dear." 



NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON 



121 



Two leagues from Agra still the 

traveller sees 
The tomb of Akbar through its cy- 
press-trees ; 
And, near at hand, the marble walls 

that hide 
The Christian Begum sleejiing at his 

side. 
And o'er her vault of burial (who shall 

tell 
If it be chance alone or miracle ?) 
The Mission press with tireless hand 

unrolls 
The words of Jesus on its lettered 

scrolls, — 
Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy 

o'er, 430 

And bids the guilty, " Go and sin no 

more ! " 



It now was dew-fall; very still 
The night lay on the lonely hill, 
Down which our homeward steps we 

bent. 
And, silent, through great silence 

went, 
Save that the tireless crickets played 
Their long, monotonous serenade. 
A young moon, at its narrowest. 
Curved sharp against the darkening 

west; 
And, momently, the beacon's star, 440 
Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar. 
From out the level darkness shot 
One instant and again was not. 
And then my friend spake quietly 
The thought of both: "Yon crescent 

see! 
Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives 
Hints of the light whereby it lives: 
Somewhat of goodness, something 

true 
From sun and spirit shining through 
All faiths, all worlds, as through the 

dark 450 

Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, 
Attests the presence everywhere 
Of love and providential care. 
The faith the old Norse heart con- 
fessed 
In one dear name, — the hopefulest 
And tenderest heard from mortal lips 
In pangs of l^irth or death, from ships 
Ice-bitten in the winter sea. 



Or lisped beside a mother's knee, — 
The wiser world hath not outgrown. 
And the All-Father is our own ! " 461 



NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON 

Nauhaught, the Indian deacon, who 

of old 
Dwelt, poor but blameless, where his 

narrowing Cape 
Stretches its shrunk arm out to all the 

winds 
And the relentless smiting of the 

waves. 
Awoke one morning from a pleasant 

dream 
Of a good angel dropping in his hand 
A fair, broad gold-piece, in the name 

of God. 

He rose and went forth with the early 

day 
Far inland, where the voices of the 

waves 
Mellowed and mingled with the whis- 
pering leaves, 10 
As, through the tangle of the low, 

thick woods. 
He searched his traps. Therein nor 

beast nor bird 
He found; though meanwhile in the 

reedy pools 
The otter plashed, and underneath the 

pines 
The partridge drummed: and as his 

thoughts went back 
To the sick wife and little child at 

home, 
What marvel that the poor man felt 

his faith 
Too weak to bear its burden, — like a 

rope 
That, strand by strand uncoiling, 

breaks above 
The hand that grasps it. " Even now, 

O Lord! 20 

Send me," he prayed, "the angel of 

my dream ! 
Nauhaught is very poor; he cannot 

wait." 

Even as he spake he heard at his bare 

feet 
A low, metallic click, and, looking 

down, 



122 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



He saw a dainty purse with disks of 

gold 
Crowding its silken net. Awhile he 

held 
The treasure up before his eyes, alone 
With his great need, feeling the won- 
drous coins 
Slide through his eager fingers, one by 

one. 
So then the dream was true. The an- 
gel brought 30 
One broad piece only; should he take 

all these ? 
Who would be wiser, in the blind, 

dumb woods? 
The loser, doubtless rich, would 

scarcely miss 
This dropped crumb from a table al- 
ways full. 
Still, while he mused, he seemed to 

hear the cry 
Of a starved child; the sick face of his 

wife 
Tempted him. Heart and flesh in 

fierce revolt 
Urged the wild license of his savage 

youth 
Against his later scruples. Bitter toil. 
Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and 

pitiless eyes 40 

To watch his halting, — had he lost 

for these 
The freedom of the woods; — the 

hunting-grounds 
Of happy spirits for a walled-in heaven 
Of everlasting psalms? One healed 

the sick 
Very far off thousands of moons 

ago: 
Had he not prayed him night and day 

to come 
And cure his bed-bound wife? Was 

there a hell ? 
Were all his fathers' people writhing 

there — 
Like the poor shell-fish set to boil 

alive — 
Forever, dying never? If he kept 50 
This gold, so needed, would the dread- 
ful God 
Torment him like a Mohawk's captive 

stuck 
With slow - consuming splinters ? 

Would the saints 
And the white angels dance and laugh 

to see him 



Burn like a pitch-pine torch? His 

Christian garb 
Seemed falling from him; with the 

fear and shame 
Of Adam naked at the cool of day. 
He gazed around. A black snake lay 

in coil 
On the hot sand, a crow with sidelong 

eye 
Watched from a dead bough. All his 

Indian lore 60 

Of evil blending with a convert's faith 
In the supernal terrors of the Book, 
He saw the Tempter in the coiling 

snake 
And ominous, black-winged bird; and 

all the while 
The low rebuking of the distant waves 
Stole in upon him like the voice of God 
Among the trees of Eden. Girding up 
His soul's loins with a resolute hand, 

he thrust 
The base thought from him: " Nau- 

haught, be a man ! 
Starve, if need be; but, while you live, 

look out 70 

From honest eyes on all men, un- 
ashamed. 
God help me ! I am deacon of the 

church, 
A baptized, praying Indian ! Should I 

do 
This secret meanness, even the barken 

knots 
Of the old trees would turn to eyes to 

see it. 
The birds would tell of it, and all the 

leaves 
Whisper above me: 'Nauhaught is a 

thief ! ' 
The sun would know it, and the stars 

that hide 
Behind his light would watch me, and 

at night 
Follow me with their sharp, accusing 

eyes- 80 

Yea, thou, God, seest me!" Then 

Nauhaught drew 
Closer his belt of leather, dulling thus 
The pain of hunger, and walked brave- 
ly back 
To the brown fishing-hamlet by the sea; 
And, pausing at the inn-door, cheerily 

asked: 
''Who hath lost aught to-day?" 

"I," said a voice; 



THE SISTERS 



123 



" Ten golden pieces, in a silken purse, 

My daughter's handiwork." He 
looked, and lo ! 

One stood before him in a coat of 
frieze, 

And the glazed hat of a seafaring man. 

Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with 
no trace of wings. 91 

Marvelling, he dropped within the 
stranger's hand 

The silken web, and turned to go his 
way. 

But the man said: " A tithe at least is 
yours; 

Take it in God's name as an honest 
man." 

And as the deacon's dusky fingers 
closed 

Over the golden gift, " Yea, in God's 
name 

I take it, with a poor man's thanks," 
he said. 

So down the street that, like a river of 
sand, 

Ran, white in sunshine, to the sum- 
mer sea, 100 

He sought his home, singing and prais- 
ing God; 

And when his neighbors in their care- 
less way 

Spoke of the owner of the silken purse, 

A Wellfleet skipper, known in every 
port 

That the Cape opens in its sandy 
wall — 

He answered, with a wise smile, to 
himself: 

"I saw the angel where they see a 
man." 



THE SISTERS 

Annie and Rhoda, sisters twain. 
Woke in the night to the sound of rain. 

The rush of wind, the ramp and roar 
Of great waves climbing a rocky shore. 

Annie rose up in her bed-gown white. 
And looked out into the storm and 
night. 

"Hush, and hearken!" she cried in 

fear, 
"Hearest thou nothing, sister dear?" 



" I hear the sea, and the plash of rain, 
And roar of the northeast hurricane. 10 

" Get thee back to the bed so warm. 
No good comes of watching a storm, 

" What is it to thee, I fain would know. 
That waves are roaring and wild 
winds blow ? 

" No lover of thine 's afloat to miss 
The harbor-lights on a night like this." 

" But I heard a voice cry out my name 
Up from the sea on the wind it came ! 

" Twice and thrice have I heard it call. 
And the voice is the voice of Estwick 
Hall!" 

On her pillow the sister tossed her 

head. 
" Hall of the Heron is safe," she said. 

"In the tautest schooner that ever 

swam 
He rides at anchor in Annisquam. 

" And, if in peril from swamping sea 
Or lee shore rocks, would he call on 
thee?" 

But the girl heard only the wind and 

tide. 
And wringing her small white hands 

she cried: 

"O sister Rhoda, there's something 

wrong; 
I hear it again, so loud and long, 30 

" ' Annie ! Annie ! ' I hear it call. 
And the voice is the voice of Estwick 
Hall!" 

Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame, 
" Thou liest ! He never would call thy 
name! 

" If he did, I would pray the wind and 

sea 
To keep him forever from thee and me!" 

Then out of the sea blew a dreadful 

blast; 
Like the cry of a dying man it passed. 



L 



124 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The young girl hushed on her Hps a 

groan, 
But through her tears a strange Kght 

shone, — 40 

The solemn joy of her heart's release 
To own and cherish its love in peace. 

"Dearest!" she whispered, under 

breath, 
" Life was a lie, but true is death. 

" The love I hid from myself away 
Shall crown me now in the light of 
day. 

" My ears shall never to wooer list, 
Never by lover my lips be kissed. 

"Sacred to thee am I henceforth, 
Thou in heaven and I on earth ! " 50 

She came and stood by her sister's 

bed 
" Hall of the Heron is dead ! " she said. 

" The wind and the waves their work 

have done, 
We shall see him no more beneath the 

sun. 

"Little will reck that heart of thine; 
It loved him not with a love like 
mine. 

"I, for his sake, were he but here. 
Could hem and 'broider thy bridal 
gear, 

"Though hands should tremble and 

eyes be wet. 
And stitch for stitch in my heart be 

set. 60 

" But now my soul with his soul I wed; 
Thine the living, and mine the dead ! " 



MARGUERITE 

MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760 

The robins sang in the orchard, the 
buds into blossoms grew; 

Little of human sorrow the buds and 
the robins knew ! 



Sick, in an alien household, the poor 

French neutral lay; 
Into her lonesome garret fell the light 

of the April day. 

Through the dusty window, curtained 
by the spider's warp and woof. 

On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on 
oaken ribs of roof, 

The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the 

teacups on the stand. 
The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it 

dropped from her sick hand ! 

What to her was the song of the robin, 
or warm morning light. 

As she lay in the trance of the dying, 
heedless of sound or sight ? lo 

Done was the work of her hands, she 
had eaten her bitter bread; 

The world of the alien people lay be- 
hind her dim and dead. 

But her soul went back to its child- 
time; she saw the sun o'er- 
flow 

With gold the Basin of Minas, and set 
over Gaspereau; 

The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the 
rush of the sea at flood. 

Through inlet and creek and river, 
from dike to upland wood; 

The gulls in the red of morning, the 
fish-hawk's rise and fall. 

The drift of the fog in moonshine, over 
the dark coast-wall. 

She saw the face of her mother, she 
heard the song she sang; 

And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell 
for vespers rang ! 20 

By her bed the hard-faced mistress 
sat, smoothing the wrinkled 
sheet. 

Peering into the face, so helpless, and 
feeling the ice-cold feet. 

With a vague remorse atoning for her 

greed and long abuse. 
By care no longer heeded and pity too 

late for use. 



THE ROBIN 



125 



Up the stairs of the garret softly the 
son of the mistress stepped, 

Leaned over the head-board, covering 
his face with his hands, and 
wept. 

Outspake the mother, who watched 

him sharply, with brow 

a-f rown : 
" What ! love you the Papist, the 

beggar, the charge of the 

town?" 

"Be she Papist or beggar who lies 
here, I know and God knows 

I love her, and fain would go with her 
wherever she goes ! 30 

"O mother! that sweet face came 
pleading, for love so athirst. 

You saw but the town-charge; I knew 
her God's angel at first." 

Shaking her gray head, the mistress 
hushed down a bitter cry; 

And awed by the silence and shadow 
of death drawing nigh, 

She murmured a psalm of the Bible; 

but closer the young girl 

pressed, 
With the last of her life in her fingers, 

the cross to her breast. 

"My son, come away," cried the mo- 
ther, her voice cruel grown. 

" She is joined to her idols, like Eph- 
raim; let her alone ! " 

But he knelt with his hand on her fore- 
head, his lips to her ear. 

And he called back the soul that was 
passing: "Marguerite, do you 
hear?" 40 

She paused on the threshold of hea- 
ven; love, pity, surprise, 

Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant 
the cloud of her eyes. 

With his heart on his lips he kissed 

her, but never her cheek grew 

red, 
And the words the living long for 

he spake in the ear of the 

dead. 



And the robins sang in the orchard, 
where buds to blossoms grew; 

Of the folded hands and the still face 
never the robins knew ! 



THE ROBIN 

My old Welsh neighbor over the way 

Crept slowly out in the sun of 

spring, 

Pushed from her ears the locks of 

gray, 

And listened to hear the robins sing. 

Her grandson, playing at marbles, 
stopped. 
And, cruel in sport as boys will be. 
Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped 
From bough to bough in the apple- 
tree. 

" Nay ! " said the grandmother; " have 

you not heard, 

My poor, bad boy ! of the fiery pit, 

And how, drop by drop, this merciful 

bird 

Carries the water that quenches it ? 

" He brings cool dew in his little bill. 
And lets it fall on the souls of sin: 

You can see the mark on his red breast 
still 
Of fires that scorch as he drops it in. 

" My poor Bron rhuddyn ! my breast- 
burned bird. 
Singing so sweetly from limb to 
limb. 
Very dear to the heart of Our Lord 
Is he who pities the lost like Him ! " 

" Amen ! " I said to the beautiful 
myth; 
" Sing, bird of God, in my heart as 
well: 
Each good thought is a drop where- 
with 
To cool and lessen the fires of hell. 

" Prayers of love like rain-drops fall. 

Tears of pity are cooling dew, 
And dear to the heart of Our Lord are 
all 
Who suffer like Him in the good 
they do ! " 



126 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 

Hail to posterity ! 
Hail, future men of Germanopolis ! 
Let the young generations yet to 

be 
Look kindly upon this. 
Think how your fathers left their na- 
tive land, — 
Dear German-land ! O sacred 
hearths and homes ! — 
And, where the wild beast roams, 
In patience planned 
New forest-homes beyond the mighty 
sea. 
There undisturbed and free lo 
To live as brothers of one family. 
What pains and cares befell. 
What trials and what fears. 
Remember, and wherein we have done 
well 
Follow our footsteps, men of coming 
years ! 
Where we have failed to do 
Aright, or wisely live. 
Be warned by us, the better way pursue, 
And, knowing we were human, even as 
you, 
Pity us and forgive ! 20 
Farewell, Posterity ! 
Farewell, dear Germany ! 
Forevermore farewell ! 

PRELUDE 

I SING the Pilgrim of a softer clime 
And milder speech than those brave 
men's who brought 
To the ice and iron of our winter 
time 
A will as firm, a creed as stern, and 

wrought 
With one m^ailed hand, and with the 
other fought. 
Simply, as fits my theme, in homely 
rhyme 
I sing the blue-eyed German Spener 
taught, 30 

Through whose veiled, mystic faith 
the Inward Light, 
Steady and still, an easy brightness, 
shone, 
Transfiguring all things in its radiance 

white. 
The garland which his meekness never 
sought 



I bring him; over fields of harvest 
sown 

With seeds of blessing, now to ripe- 
ness grown, 
I bid the sower pass before the reap- 
ers' sight. 



Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the 

day 
From Pennsylvania's vales of spring 

away. 
Where, forest-walled, the scattered 

hamlets lay 40 

Along the wedded rivers. One long 

bar 
Of purple cloud, on which the evening 

star 
Shone like a jewel on a scimitar, 

Held the sky's golden gateway. 

Through the deep 
Hush of the woods a murmur seemed 

to creep. 
The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of 

sleep. 

All else was still. The oxen from their 
ploughs 

Rested at last, and from their long 
day's browse 

Came the dun files of Krisheim's home- 
bound cows. 

And the young city, round whose vir- 
gin zone so 

The rivers like two mighty arms were 
thrown. 

Marked by the smoke of evening fires 
alone, 

Lay in the distance, lovely even 

then 
With its fair women and its stately 

men 
Gracing the forest court of William 

Penn, 

Urban yet sylvan; in its rough-hewn 

frames 
Of oak and pine the dryads held their 

claims, 
And lent its streets their pleasant 

woodland names. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



127 



t 




Spener 



Anna Pastorius down the leafy 

lane 
Looked city-ward, then stooped to 

prune again 60 

Her vines and simples, with a sigh of 
_ pain. 

iFor fast the streaks of ruddy sunset 

paled 
In the oak clearing, and, as daylight 

failed, 
Slow, overhead, the dusky night-birds 

sailed. 

:igain she looked : between green walls 

of shade, 
Vith low-bent head as if with sorrow 

weighed, 



Daniel Pastorius slowly came and 
said, 

" God's peace be with thee, Anna ! " 

Then he stood 
Silent before her, wrestling with the 

mood 
Of one who sees the evil and not good. 

"What is it, my Pastorius?" As she 
spoke, 71 

A slow, faint smile across his features 
broke. 

Sadder than tears. "Dear heart," he 
said, " our folk 

" Are even as others. Yea, our goodli- 
est Friends 



128 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Are frail; our elders have their selfish 

ends, 
And few dare trust the Lord to make 

amends 

"For duty's loss. So even our feeble 
word 

For the dumb slaves the startled meet- 
ing heard 

As if a stone its quiet waters stirred; 

" And, as the clerk ceased reading, 
there began 80 

A ripple of dissent which downward 
ran 

In widening circles, as from man to 
man. 

"Somewhat was said of running be- 
fore sent, 

Of tender fear that some their guide 
outwent, 

Troublers of Israel. I was scarce in- 
tent 

" On hearing, for behind the reverend 
row 

Of gallery Friends, in dumb and pite- 
ous show, 

I saw, methought, dark faces full of 
woe. 

" And, in the spirit, I was taken where 
They toiled and suffered; I was made 

aware 90 

Of shame and wrath and anguish and 

despair ! 

" And while the meeting smothered 

our poor plea 
With cautious phrase, a Voice there 

seemed to be, 
' As ye have done to these ye do to me ! ' 

"So it all passed; and the old tithe 

went on 
Of anise, mint, and cumin, till the sun 
Set, leaving still the weightier work 

undone. 

" Help, for the good man faileth ! Who 

is strong, 
If these be weak ? Who shall rebuke 

the wrong. 
If these consent ? How long, O Lord ! 

how longl" 100 



He ceased; and, bound in spirit with 

the bound, 
With folded arms, and eyes that 

sought the ground, 
Walked musingly his little garden 

round. 

About him, beaded with the falling 

dew, 
Rare plants of power and herbs of 

healing grew. 
Such as Van Helmont and Agrippa 

knew. 

For, by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle 

sage. 
With the mild mystics of his dreamy 

age 
He read the herbal signs of nature's 

page. 

As once he heard in sweet Von Mer- 
lau's bowers no 

Fair as herself, in boyhood's happy 
hours, 

The pious Spener read his creed in 
flowers. 

"The dear Lord give us patience!" 

said his wife. 
Touching with finger-tip an aloe, rife 
With leaves sharp-pointed like an Az- 
tec knife 

Or Carib spear, a gift to William Penn 
From the rare gardens of John Eve- 
lyn, 
Brought from the Spanish Main by 
merchantmen. 

" See this strange plant its steady pur- 
pose hold. 

And, year by year, its patient leaves 
unfold, 120 

Till the young eyes that watched it 
first are old. 

" But some time, thou hast told me, 
there shall come 

A sudden beauty, brightness, and per- 
fume; 

The century-moulded bud shall burst 
in bloom. 

"So may the seed which hath been 
sown to-day ' 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



129 



Grow with the years, and, after long 

delay, 
Break into bloom, and God's eternal 

Yea 

" Answer at last the patient prayers of 
them 

Who now, by faith alone, behold its 
stem 

Crowned with the flowers of Free- 
dom's diadem. 130 

" Meanwhile, to feel and suffer, work 

and wait. 
Remains for us. The wrong indeed is 

great. 
But love and patience conquer soon or 

late." 

"Well hast thou said, my Anna!" 
Tenderer 

Than youth's caress upon the head of 
her 

Pastorius laid his hand. " Shall we de- 
mur 

"Because the vision tarrieth? In an 

hour 
We dream not of, the slow-grown bud 

may flower. 
And what was sown in weakness rise in 

power!" 

Then through the vine-draped door 
whose legend read, mo 

" Procul este profani ! " Anna led 
To where their child upon his Httle bed 

Looked up and smiled. " Dear heart," 

slie said, " if we 
Must bearers of a heavy burden be. 
Our boy, God wiUing, yet the day shall 

see 

"When from the gallery to the far- 
thest seat. 

Slave and slave-owner shall no longer 
meet. 

But all sit equal at the Master's feet." 

On the stone hearth the blazing wal- 
nut block 

Set tlie low walls a-glimmer, showed 
the cock ISO 

Rebuking Peter on the Van Wyck 
clock, 



Shone on old tomes of law and physic, 

side 
By side with Fox and Behmen, played 

at hide 
And seek with Anna, amidst her 

household pride 

Of flaxen webs, and on the table, bare 
Of costly cloth or silver cup, but 

where. 
Tasting the fat shads of the Delaware, 

The courtly Penn had praised the 
good-wife's cheer. 

And quoted Horace o'er her home- 
brewed beer. 

Till even grave Pastorius smiled to 
hear. 160 

In such a home, beside the Schuyl- 
kill's wave. 

He dwelt in peace with God and man, 
and gave 

Food to the poor and shelter to the 
slave. 

For all too soon the New W^orld's scan- 
dal shamed 

The righteous code by Penn and Sid- 
ney framed. 

And men withheld the human rights 
they claimed. 

And slowly wealth and station sanc- 
tion lent. 

And hardened avarice, on its gains 
intent, 

Stifled the inward whisper of dissent. 

Yet all the while the burden rested 

sore 170 

On tender hearts. At last Pastorius bore 

Their warning message to the Church's 

door 

In God's name; and the leaven of the 
word 

Wrought ever after in the souls who 
heard, 

And a dead conscience in its grave- 
clothes stirred 

To troubled life, and urged the vain 

excuse 
Of Hebrew custom, patriarchal use. 
Good in itself if evil in abuse. 



UO 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Gravely Paytoriiis listened, not the less 
Discerning through the decent fig- 
leaf dress >8o 
Of the poor plea its shame of selfish- 
ness. 

One Scripture rule, at least, was unfor- 

got; 
He hid the outcast, and bewrayed luni 

not; 
And, when his prey the human hunter 

sought, 

He scrupled not, while Anna's wise 

delay 
And proffered cheer prolonged the 

master's stay, 
To speed the black guest safely on his 

way. 

Yet who shall guess his bitter grief 

who lends 
His life to some great cause, and finds 

his friends 
Shame or betray it for their private 

ends? 190 

How felt the Master when his chosen 

strove 
In childish folly for their seats above; 
And tiiat fond mother, blinded by her 

love, 

Besought him that her sons, beside his 

throne, 
Might sit on either hand ? Amidst his 

own 
A stranger oft, companionless and lone, 

God's priest and prophet stands. The 

martyr's pain 
Is not alone from scourge and cell and 

chain; 
Sharper the pang when, shouting in 

his train, 199 

His weak disciples by their lives deny 
The loud hosannas of their daily cry, 
And make their echo of his truth a lie. 

His forest home no hermit's cell he 
found. 

Guests, motley-minded, drew his 
heartli around, 

And held armed truce upon its neu- 
tral ground. 



There Indian chiefs with battle-bows 

unstrung. 
Strong, hero-hmbed, like those whom 

Homer sung, 
Pastorius fancied, when the world was 

young. 

Came with their tawny women, lithe 

and tall, 
Like bronzes in his friend Von Ro- 

deck's hall, 210 

Comelv, if black, and not unpleasing 

■^all. 

There hungry folk in homespun drab 

and gray 
Drew round his board on Monthly 

Meeting day. 
Genial, half merry in their friendly 

way, 

Or, haply, pilgrims from the Father- 
land, 

Weak, timid, homesick, slow to un- 
derstand 

The New World's promise, sought his 
helping hand. 

Or painful Kelpius from his hermit den 
By Wissahickon, maddest of good 

men, 
Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of 

Petersen. 220 

Deep in the woods, where the small 

river slid 
Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt 

Mystic hid, 
Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid, 

Reading the books of Daniel and of 

John, 
And Behmen's Morning-Redness, 

through the Stone 
Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes 

alone. 

Whereby he read what man ne'er read 

before. 
And saw the visions man shall see no 

more. 
Till the great angel, striding sea and 

shore, 

Shall bid all flesh await, on land or 
ships, 230 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



131 



The warning trump of the Apocalypse, 
Shattering the heavens before the 
dread echpse. 

Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded 

chin 
Leaned o'er the gate; or Ranter, pure 

within. 
Aired his perfection in a world of sin. 

Or, talking of old home scenes. Op der 

Graaf 
Teased the low back-log with his shod- 

den staff. 
Till the red embers broke into a laugh 

And dance of flame, as if they fain 
would cheer 

The rugged face, half tender, half aus- 
tere, 240 

Touched with the pathos of a home- 
sick tear ! 

Or Sluyter, saintly familist, whose 

word 
As law the Brethren of the Manor 

heard, 
Announced the speedy terrors of the 

Lord, 

And turned, like Lot at Sodom, from 
his race. 

Above a wrecked world with compla- 
cent face 

Riding secure upon his plank of grace ! 

Haply, from Finland's birchen groves 
exiled, 

Manly in thought, in simple ways a 
child, 

His white hair floating round his vis- 
age mild, 250 

The Swedish pastor sought the Quak- 
er's door, 

Pleased from his neighbor's lips to 
hear once more 

His long-disused and half-forgotten 
lore. 

For both could baffle Babel's lingual 
curse. 

And speak in Bion's Doric, and re- 
hearse 

Cleanthes' hymn or "Virgil's sounding 
verse. 



And oftPastorius and the meek old man 
Arofued as Quaker and as Lutheran, 
Ending in Christian love, as they be- 
gan. 

With lettered Lloyd on pleasant 
morns he strayed 260 

Where Sommerhausen over vales of 
shade 

Looked miles away, by every flower 
delayed. 

Or song of bird, happy and free with 
one 

Who loved, like him, to let his mem- 
ory run 

Over old fields of learning, and to sun 

Himself in Plato's wise philosophies, 
And dream with Philo over mysteries 
Whereof the dreamer never finds the 
keys; 

To touch all themes of thought, nor 
weakly stop 

For doubt of truth, but let the buckets 
drop 270 

Deep down and bring the hidden wa- 
ters up. 

For there was freedom in that waken- 
ing time 

Of tender souls; to differ was not 
crime; 

The varying bells made up the perfect 
chime. 

On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal, 
The white, clear light, tradition-col- 
ored, stole 
Through the stained oriel of each hu- 
man soul. 

Gathered from many sects, the 

Quaker brought 
His old beliefs, adjusting to the 

thought •» 
That moved his soul the creed his 

fathers taught. 280 

One faith alone, so broad that all man- 
kind 

Within themselves its secret witness 
find. 

The soul's communion with the Eter- 
nal Mind, 



132 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



The Spirit's law, the Iinvard Rule and 

Guide, 
Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, 

allied, 
The polishetl I'enn and Cromwell's 

Ironside. 

As still in Heniskerck's Quaker Meet- 
ing, face 

By face in Flemish detail, we may 
trace 

How loose-mouthed boor and fine an- 
cestral grace 

Sat in close contrast, — the clipt- 
headed churl, 290 

Broad market-dame, and simple serv- 
ing-girl 

By skirt of silk and periwig in 
curl! 

For soul touched soul; the spiritual 

treasure-trove 
Made all men equal, none could rise 

above 
Nor sink below that level of God's 

love. 

So, with his rustic neighbors sitting 
down. 

The homespun frock beside the schol- 
ar's gown, 

Pastorius to the manners of the town 

Added the freedom of the woods, and 

sought 
The bookless wisdom by experience 

taught, 300 

And learned to love his new-found 

home, while not 

Forgetful of tlie old; the seasons went 
Their rounds, and somewhat to his 

spirit lent 
Of their own calm and measureless 

content. 

Glad even to tears, he heard the robin 

sing 
His song of welcome to the Western 

spring, 
And bluebird i)orrowing from the sky 

his wing. 

And when the miracle of autumn 
came, 



And all the woods \vith many-colored 
flame 

Of splendor, making summer's green- 
ness tame, 310 

Burned, unconsumed, a voice without 

a sound 
Spake to him from each kindled bush 

around. 
And made the strange, new landscape 

holy ground ! 

And w'hen the bitter north-wind, keen 

and swift. 
Swept the white street and piled the 

door-yard drift. 
He exercised, as Friends might say, his 

gift 

Of verse, Dutch, English, Latin, like 

the hash 
Of corn and beans in Indian succotash; 
Dull, doubtless, but with here and 

there a flash 

Of wit and fine conceit, — the good 
man's play 320 

Of quiet fancies, meet to while away 
The slow hours measuring off an idle 
day. 

At evening, while his wife put on her 

look 
Of love's endurance, from its niche he 

took 
The written pages of his ponderous 

book. 

And read, in half the languages of man, 
His " Rusca Apium," which with bees 

began, 
And through the gamut of creation ran. 

Or, now and then, the missive of some 

friend 
In gray Altorf or storied Niirnberg 

penned 330 

Dropped in upon him like a guest to 

spend 

The night beneath his roof-tree. Mys- 
tical 

The fair Von Merlau spake as waters 
fall 

And voices sound in dreams, and yet 
withal 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



^33 




William Peun 



Human and sweet, as if each far, low 

tone, 
Over the roses of her gardens blown 
Brought the warm sense of beauty all 

her own. 

Wise Spener questioned what his 

friend could trace 
Of spiritual influx or of saving grace 
In the wild natures of the Indian race. 

And learned Schurmberg, fain, at 
times, to look 341 



From Talmud, Koran, Veds, and Pen- 
tateuch, 

Sought out his pupil in his far-off 
nook, 

To query with him of climatic change, 
Of bird, beast, reptile, in his forest 

range. 
Of flowers and fruits and simples new 

and strange. 

And thus the Old and New World 
reached their hands 



M4 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Across tlie water, and tlie friondlylands 
Talked with each otlier from their 
severed strands. 

Pastorius answered all: while seed 
and root 3 so 

Sent from his new home grew to flower 
and fruit 

Along the Rhine and at the Spessart's 
foot; 

And, in return, the flowers his boy- 
hood knew 

Smiled at his door, the same in form 
and hue, 

And on his vines the Rhenish clusters 
grew. 

No idler he; whoever else might shirk, 
He set his hand to every honest 

work, — 
Farmer and teacher, court and meet- 
ing clerk. 

Still on the town seal his device is found, 
Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a 

trefoil ground, 360 

With " Vinum, Linum et Textrinum" 

wound. 

One house sufficed for gospel and for 

law. 
Where Paul and Orotius, Scripture 

text and saw, 
Assured the good, and held the rest in 

awe. 

Whatever legal maze he wandered 

througli, 
He kept the Sermon on the Mount in 

view, 
And justice always into mercy grew. 

No wiiipping-post he needed, stocks, 

nor jail, 
Nor ducking-stool; the orchard-thief 

grew pale 
At his rebuke, the vixen ceased to 

rail, 370 

The usurer's grasp released the forfeit 
land; 

The slanderer faltered at the witness- 
stand, 

And all men took his counsel for com- 
mand. 



Was it caressing air, the brooding 

love 
Of tenderer skies than German land 

knew of, 
Green calm below, blue quietness 

above, 

Still flow of water, deep repose of 
wood 

That, with a sense of loving Father- 
hood 

And childlike trust in the Eternal 
Good, 

Softened all hearts, and dulled the 
edge of hate, 380 

Hushed strife, and taught impatient 
zeal to w^ait 

The slow assurance of the better state? 

Who knows what goadings in their 

sterner way 
O'er jagged ice, reUeved by granite 

gray, 
Blew round the men of Massachusetts 

Bay? 

What hate of heresy the east-wind 

woke ? 
What hints of pitiless power and terror 

spoke 
In waves that on their iron coast-line 

broke ? 

Be it as it may: within the Land of 

Penn 
The sectary yielded to the citizen, 390 
And peaceiFui dwelt the many-creeded 

men. 

Peace brooded over all. No trumpet 

stung 
The air to madness, and no steeple 

flung 
Alarums down from bells at midnight 

rung. 

The land slept well. The Indian from 

his face 
Washed all his war-paint off, and in 

the place 
Of battle-marches sped the peaceful 

chase. 

Or wrought for wages at the white 
man's side, — 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



13s 



Giving to kindness what his native 

. pride 
And lazy freedom to all else denied. 

And well the curious scholar loved the 
old 401 

Traditions that his swarthy neighbors 
told 

By wigwam-fires when nights were 
growing cold, 

Discerned the fact round which their 

fancy drew 
Its dreams, and held their childish 

faith more true 
To God and man than half the creeds 

he knew. 

The desert blossomed round him; 
wheat-fields rolled 

Beneath the warm wind waves of 
green and gold; 

The planted ear returned its hundred- 
fold. 

Great clusters ripened in a warmer 
sun 410 

Than that which by the Rhine stream 
shines upon 

The purpling hillsides with low vines 
o'errun. 

About each rustic porch the humming- 
bird 

Tried with light bill, that scarce a 
petal stirred, 

The Old World flowers to virgin soil 
transferred; 

And the first-fruits of pear and apple, 

bending 
The young boughs down, their gold 

and russet blending. 
Made glad his heart, familiar odors 

lending 

To the fresh fragrance of the birch and 

pine. 
Life-everlasting, bay, and eglantine. 
And all the subtle scents the woods 

combine. 421 

Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in 

summer calm. 
Warm, tender, restful, sweet with 

woodland balm, 



Came to him, like some mother-hal- 
lowed psalm 

To the tired grinder at the noisy 

wheel 
Of labor, winding off from memory's 

reel 
A golden thread of music. With no 

peal 

Of bells to call them to the house of 

praise. 
The scattered settlers through green 

forest-ways 
Walked meeting-ward. In reverent 

amaze 430 

The Indian trapper saw them, from 

the dim 
Shade of the alders on the rivulet's 

rim. 
Seek the Great Spirit's house to talk 

with Him. 

There, through the gathered stillness 
multiplied 

And made intense by sympathy, out- 
side 

The sparrows sang, and the gold-robin 
cried, 

A-swing upon his elm. A faint per- 
fume 

Breathed through the open windows 
of the room 

From locust-trees, heavy with clus- 
tered bloom. 

Thither, perchance, sore-tried confes- 
sors came, 440 

Whose fervor jail nor pillory could 
tame, 

Proud of the cropped ears meant to be 
their shame, 

Men who had eaten slavery's bitter 

bread 
In Indian isles; pale women who had 

bled 
Under the hangman's lash, and bravely 

said 

God's message through their prison's 

iron bars; 
And gray old soldier-converts, seamed 

with scars 



136 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY P0P:MS 



From every stricken field of England's 
wars. 

Lowly before the Unseen Presence 

knelt 
Each waiting heart, till haply some 

one felt 450 

On ins moved lips the seal of silence 

melt 

Or, without spoken words, low breath- 
ings stole 
Of a diviner life from soiil to soul. 
Baptizing in one tender thought the 
whole. 

When shaken hands announced the 

meeting o'er. 
The friendly group still lingered at the 

door, 
Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the store 

Of weekly tidings. Meanwhile youth 
and maid 

Down the green vistas of the wood- 
land strayed. 

Whispered and smiled and oft their 
feet delayed. 460 

Did the l)oy's whistle answer back the 

thrushes? 
Did light girl laughter ripple through 

tiie Ijushes, 
As brooks make merry over roots and 

rushes ? 

I'n vexed the sweet air seemed. With- 
out a wound 

The ear of silence heard, and every 
soimd 

Its place in nature's fine accordance 
found. 

And solemn meeting, summer sky and 
wood, 

Old kindly faces, youth and maiden- 
hood 

Seemed, like God's new creation, very 
good ! 

And, greeting all with quiet smile and 
word, 470 

Pastorius went his way. The unscared 
bird 

Sang at liis side; scarcely the squirrel 
stirred 



At his hushed footstep on the mossy 

sod; 
And, wheresoe'er the good man 

looked or trod. 
He felt the peace of nature and of God. 

His social life wore no ascetic form, 
He loved all beauty, without fear of 

harm, 
And in his veins his Teuton blood ran 

warm. 

Strict to himself, of other men no spy. 
He made his own no circuit- judge to 

try 480 

The freer conscience of his neighbors 

by. 

With love rebuking, by his life alone, 
Gracious and sweet, the better way 

was showTi, 
The joy of one, who, seeking not his 

own, 

And faithful to all scruples, finds at 
last 

The thorns and shards of duty over- 
past, 

And daily life, beyond his hope's fore- 
cast, 

Pleasant and beautiful with sight and 

sound 
And flowers upspringing in its narrow 

round. 
And all his days with quiet gladness 

crowned. 490 

He sang not; but if sometimes 

tempted strong. 
He hummed w^hat seemed like Altorfs 

Burschen-song, 
His good wife smiled and did not 

count it wrong. 

For well he loved his boyhood's bro- 
ther-band; 

His Memory, while he trod the New 
World's strand, 

A double ganger walked the Father- 
land ! 

If, wlien on frostv Christmas eves the 

light 
Shone on his quiet hearth, he missed 

the sight 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



137 



Of Yule-log, Tree, and Christ-child all 
in white; 

And closed his eyes, and listened to 
the sweet 500 

Old wait-songs sounding down his na- 
tive street, 

And watched again the dancers' min- 
ghng feet; 

Yet not the less, when once the vision 

passed, 
He held the plain and sober maxims 

fast 
Of the dear Friends with whom his lot 

was cast. 

Still all attuned to nature's melodies 
He loved the bird's song in his door- 
yard trees. 
And the low hum of home-returning 
bees; 

The blossomed flax, the tulip-trees in 

bloom 
Down the long street, the beauty and 

perfume sio 

Of apple-boughs, the mingling light 

and gloom 

Of Sommerhausen's woodlands, woven 

through 
With sun-threads; and the music the 

wind drew, 
Mournful and sweet, from leaves it 

overblew. 

And evermore, beneath this outward 
sense. 

And through the common sequence of 
events, 

He felt the guiding hand of Provi- 
dence 

Reach out of space. A Voice spake in 

his ear, 
And lo ! all other voices far and near 
Died at that whisper, full of meanings 

clear. 520 

The Light of Life shone round him; 
one by one 

The wandering lights, that all-mis- 
leading run. 

Went out like candles paling in the 
sun. 



That Light he followed, step by step, 

where'er 
It led, as in the vision of the seer 
The wheels moved as the spirit in the 

clear 

And terrible crystal moved, with all 
their eyes 

Watching the living splendor sink or 
rise. 

Its will their will, knowing no other- 
wise. 

Within himself he found the law of 
right, 530 

He walked by faith and not the let- 
ter's sight, 

And read his Bible by the Inward 
Light. 

And if sometimes the slaves of form 
and rule. 

Frozen in their creeds hke fish in win- 
ter's pool, 

Tried the large tolerance of his liberal 
school, 

His door w^as free to men of every 

name. 
He welcomed all the seeking souls 

who came, 
And no man's faith he made a cause 

of blame. 

But best he loved in leisure hours to 

see 
His own dear Friends sit by him knee 

to knee, 540 

In social converse, genial, frank, and 

free. 

There sometimes silence (it were hard 

to tell 
Who owned it first) upon the circle 

fell. 
Hushed Anna's busy wheel, and laid 

its spell 

On the black boy who grimaced by the 

hearth. 
To solemnize his shining face of mirth; 
Only the old clock ticked amidst the 

dearth 

Of sound; nor eye was raised nor 
hand was stirred 



138 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



In that soul-sal )l)ath, till at last some 

word 
Of tender counsel or low prayer was 

heard. sso 

Then guests, who lingered but fare- 
well to say 

And take love's message, went their 
homeward way; 

So passed in peace the guileless Quak- 
er's day. 



Nay, were the plant itself but mythi- 
cal, 
Set in the fresco of tradition's wall 
Like Jotham's bramble, mattereth not 
at all. 

Enough to know that, through the 

w'inter's frost 
And summer's heat, no seed of truth is 

lost, S70 

And every duty pays at last its cost. 




Niirnberg 



His was the Christian's unsung Age of 

Gold. 
A truer idvl than the bards have 

told 
Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old. 

Where still the Friends their place of 
burial keep, 

And century-rooted mosses o'er it 
creep, 

The Niirnberg scholar and his help- 
meet sleep. 

And Anna's aloe? if it flowered at 
la.st 560 

In Hartram's garden, did Jolm Wool- 
num ca-st 

A glance upon it as he meekly passed ? 

And did a secret sympathy possess 
That tender soul, and for the slave's 

redress 
Lend hope, strength, patience? It 

were vain to guess. 



For, ere Pastorius left the sun and air, 
God sent the answer to his life-long 

prayer; 
The child was born beside the Dela- 
ware, 

Who, in the power a holy purpose 

lends. 
Guided his people unto nobler ends. 
And left them w^orthier of the name of 

Friends. 

And lo ! the fulness of the time has 

come. 
And over all the exile's Western 

home, 
From sea to sea the flowers of freedom 

bloom ! s8o 

And joy-bells ring, and silver trum- 
pets blow; 
But not for thee, Pastorius ! Even so 
The world forgets, but the wise angels 
know. 



KING VOLMER AND ELSIE 



^39 



KING VOLMER AND ELSIE 

AFTER THE DANISH OF CHRISTIAN 
WINTER 

Where, over heathen doom-rings and 
gray stones of the Horg, 

In its little Christian city stands the 
church of Vordingborg, 

In merry mood King Volmer sat, for- 
getful of his power, 

As idle as the Goose of Gold that 
brooded on his tower. 

Out spake the King to Henrik, his 

young and faithful squire: 
" Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the maid 

of thy desire?" 
" Of all the men in Denmark she lov- 

eth only me: 
As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to 

thee." 

Loud laughed the king: "To-morrow 

shall bring another day. 
When I myself will test her; she will 

not say me nay." lo 

Thereat the lords and gallants, that 

round about him stood. 
Wagged all their heads in concert and 

smiled as courtiers should. 

The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg, 

and on the ancient town 
From the tall tower of Valdemar the 

Golden Goose looks down; 
The yellow grain is waving in the 

pleasant wind of morn. 
The wood resounds with cry of hounds 

and blare of hunter's horn. 

In the garden of her father little Elsie 

sits and spins. 
And, singing with the early birds, her 

daily task begins. 
Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls 

around her garden-bower. 
But she is sweeter than the mint and 

fairer than the flower. 20 

About her form her kirtle blue clings 

lovingly, and, white 
As snow, her loose sleeves only leave 

her small, round wrists in sight; 
Below, the modest petticoat can only 

half conceal 
The motion of the lightest foot that 

ever turned a wheel. 



The cat sits purring at her side, bees 

hum in sunshine warm; 
But, look! she starts, she lifts her 

face, she shades it with her 

arm. 
And, hark ! a train of horsemen, with 

sound of dog and horn, 
Come leaping o'er the ditches, come 

trampling down the corn ! 

Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and 

scarf and plume streamed gay. 
As fast beside her father's gate the 

riders held their way; 30 

And one was brave in scarlet cloak, 

with golden spur on heel. 
And, as he checked his foaming steed, 

the maiden checked her wheel. 

" All hail among thy roses, the fairest 
rose to me ! 

For weary months in secret my heart 
has longed for thee! '' 

What noble knight was this? What 
words for modest maiden's 
ear? 

She dropped a lowly courtesy of bash- 
fulness and fear. 

She lifted up her spinning-wheel; she 
fain would seek the door. 

Trembling in every limb, her cheek 
with blushes crimsoned o'er. 

" Nay, fear me not," the rider said, " I 
offer heart and hand. 

Bear witness these good Danish 
knights who round about me 
stand. 40 

" I grant you time to think of this, to 
answer as you may, 

For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring 
another day." 

He spake the old phrase slyly, as glan- 
cing round his train. 

He saw his merry followers seek to 
hide their smiles in vain. 

"The snow of pearls I'll scatter in 

your curls of golden hair, 
I'll line with furs the velvet of the 

kirtle tliat you wear; 
All precious gems shall twine your 

neck; and in a chariot gay 
You shall ride, my little Elsie, behind 

four steeds of gray. 



I40 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



" And harps shall sound, and flutes 

shall play, and brazen lamps 

shall glow; 
On marble floors your feet shall weave 

the dances to and fro. 50 

At frosty eventide for us the blazing 

hearth shall shine. 
While at our eaae we play at draughts, 

and drink the l)lood-red wine." 

Then Elsie raised her head and met 
her wooer face to face; 

A roguish smile shone in her eye and 
on her lip found place. 

Hack from her low white forehead the 
curls of gold siie threw, 

And lifted up her eyes to his, steady 
and clear and blue. 

" I am a lowly peasant, and you a gal- 
lant knight; 

I will not trust a love that soon may 
cool and turn to slight. 

If you would wed me henceforth be a 
]:)('asant, not a lord; 

I i)id you hang upon the wall your 
tried and trusty sword." 60 

"To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen 

Dynadel away. 
And in its place will swing the scythe 

and mow your father's hay." 
" Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak 

my eyes can never bear; 
A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is 

all that you must wear." 

" Well, Vadmal will I wear for you," 

the rider gavlv spoke, 
" And on the Lord's high altar I '11 lay 

my scarlet cloak." 
"But mark," she said, "no stately 

horse my peasant love must 

ride, 
A yoke of steers before the plough is 

all that he must guide." 

The knight looked down upon his 

steed: "Well, let him wander 

free : 
No other man must ride the horse that 

has been backed bv me. 70 

Henceforth I'll tread the" furrow and 

to my oxen talk, 
If only little Elsie beside mv plough 

will walk." 



" You must take from out your cellar 

cask of wine and flask and 

can; 
The homely mead I brew you may 

serve a peasant-man." 
" Most wdllingly, fair Elsie, I '11 drink 

that mead of thine, 
And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat 

to drain my generous wine." 

" Now break your shield asunder, and 

shatter sign and boss, 
Unmeet for peasant-wedded arms, 

your knightly knee across. 
And pull me down your castle from 

top to basement wall. 
And let your plough trace furrows in 

the ruins of your hall ! " 80 

Then smiled he with a lofty pride; 

right well at last he knew 
The maiden of the spinning-wheel 

was to her troth-plight true. 
"Ah, roguish little Elsie! you act 

your part full well: 
You know that I must bear my shield 

and in my castle dw' ell ! 

" The lions ramping on that shield be- 
tween the hearts aflame 

Keep watch o'er Denmark's honor, 
and guard her ancient name. 

For know that I am Volmer; I dwell 
in yonder towers, 

Who ploughs them ploughs up Den- 
mark, this goodly home of 
ours! 

"I tempt no more, fair Elsie! your 

heart I know is true; 
Would God that all our maidens were 

good and pure as you ! 90 

Well have you pleased your monarch, 

and he shall well repay; 
God's peace ! Farewell ! To-morrow 

will bring another day ! " 

He lifted up his bridle hand, he 

spurred his good steed then, 
And like a whirl-blast swept away 

with all his gallant men. 
The steel hoofs beat the rocky path; 

again on wands of morn 
The wood resounds with cry of 

hounds and blare of hunter's 

horn. 



THE THREE BELLS 



141 




■ All night across the waters 

The tossing lights shone clear " 



"Thou true and ever faithful!" the 

hstening Henrik cried; 
And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he 

stood by Elsie's side. 
None saw the fond embracing, save, 

shining from afar, 
The Golden Goose that watched them 

from the tower of Valdemar. 

O darling girls of Denmark ! of all the 

flowers that throng loi 

Her vales of spring the fairest, I sing 

for you my song. 
No praise as yours so bravely rewards 

the singer's skill; 
Thank God! of maids like Elsie the 

land has plenty still ! 



THE THREE BELLS 

Beneath the low-hung night cloud 
That raked her splintering mast 

The good ship settled slowly, 
The cruel leak gained fast. 



Over the awful ocean 

Her signal guns pealed out. 

Dear God ! was that Thy answer 
From the horror round about? 

A voice came down the wild wind, 
"Ho! ship ahoy!" its cry: 10 

" Our stout Three Bells of Glasgow 
Shall lay till daylight by ! " 

Hour after hour crept slowly, 

Yet on the heaving swells 
Tossed up and down the ship-lights, 

The lights of the Three Bells ! 

And ship to ship made signals, 
Man answered back to man, 

While oft, to cheer and hearten, 
The Three Bells nearer ran; 20 

And the captain from her taffrail 
Sent down his hopeful cry : 

"Take heart! Hold on!" he shouted! 
" The Three Bells shall lay bv ! " 



142 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



All night across the waters 
The tossing; lights shone clear; 

All night from reeling taffrail 
The Three Hells sent her cheer. 

And when the dreary watches 

Of stortn and darkness passed, 30 

Just as the wreck lurched under, 
All souls were saved at last. 

Sail on, Tiiree liells, forever. 

In grateful memory sail! 
Ring on, Three liells of rescue, 

Above the wave and gale ! 

Type of the Love eternal. 

Repeat the Master's cry. 
As tossing through our darkness 

The lights of God draw nigh ! 40 



JOHN UNDERHILL 

A SCORE of years had come and gone 

Since the Pilgrims landed on Ply- 
mouth stone, 

When Captain Underhill, bearing 
scars 

From Indian ambush and Flemish 
wars, 

Left three-hilled Boston and wan- 
dered down. 

East by north, to Cocheco town. 

With Vane the younger, in council 

sweet, 
He had sat at Anna Hutchinson's feet, 
And, when the bolt of banislunent fell 
( )n the head of his saintly oracle, 10 
He liad shared her ill as her good re- 
port. 
And braved the wrath of the General 
Court. 

He shook from his feet as he rode away 
The dust of the Ma.ssachusetts Bay. 
The world might bless and the world 

might i)an, 
What did it matter the perfect man. 
To whom the freedom of earth was 

given, 
Proof against sin, and sure of heaven ? 

He cheered liis heart as he rode along 

With screed of Scripture and holy 

song, ao 



Or thought how he rode with his 

lances free 
By the Lower Rhine and the Zuyder- 

Zee, 
Till his wood-path grew to a trodden 

road, 
And Hilton Point in the distance 

showed. 

He saw the church with the block- 
house nigh. 

The two fair rivers, the flakes thereby, 

And, tacking to windward, low and 
crank. 

The little shallop from Strawberry 
Bank ; 

And he rose in his stirrups and looked 
abroad 

Over land and water, and praised the 
Lord. 30 

Goodly and stately and grave to see, 
Into the clearing's space rode he, 
With the sun on the hilt of his sword 

in sheath. 
And his silver buckles and spurs be- 
neath. 
And the settlers welcomed him, one 

and all, 
From swift Quampeagan to Gonic 
Fall. 

And he said to the elders: "Lo, I 
come 

As the way seemed open to seek a 
home. 

Somewhat the Lord hath wrought by 
my hands 

In the Narragansett and Nether- 
lands, 40 

And if here ye have work for a Chris- 
tian man, 

I will tarry, and serve ye as best I can. 

" I boast not of gifts, but fain would 

own 
The wonderful favor God hath shown, 
The special mercy vouchsafed one day 
On the shore of JMarragansett Bay, 
As I sat, with my pipe, from the camp 

aside. 
And mused like Isaac at eventide. 

" A sudden sweetness of peace I found, 

A garment of gladness wrapped me 

round; 50 



JOHN UNDERHILL 



143 



I felt from the law of works released, 
The strife of the flesh and spirit 

ceased, 
My faith to a full assurance grew. 
And all I had hoped for myself I 

knew. 

" Now, as God appointeth, I keep my 

way, 
I shall not stumble, I shall not stray; 
He hath taken away my fig-leaf dress, 
I wear the robe of His righteousness; 
And the shafts of Satan no more avail 
Than Pequot arrows on Christian 

mail." 60 

"Tarry with us," the settlers cried, 
" Thou man of God, as our ruler and 

guide." 
And Captain Underhill bowed his 

head. 
"The will of the Lord be done!" he' 

said. 
And the morrow beheld him sitting 

down 
In the ruler's &eat in Cocheco town. 

And he judged therein as a just man 

should; 
His words were wise and his rule was 

good; 
He coveted not his neighbor's land. 
From the holding of bribes he shook 

his hand; 70 

And through the camps of the heathen 

ran 
A wholesome fear of the valiant man. 

But the heart is deceitful, the good 

Book saith. 
And life hath ever a savor of death. 
Through hymns of triumph the 

tempter calls. 
And whoso thinketh he standeth falls. 
Alas ! ere their round the seasons ran. 
There was grief in the soul of the 

saintly man. 

The tempter's arrows that rarely fail 
Had found the joints of his spiritual 

mail; 80 

And men took note of his gloomy air. 
The shame in his eye, the halt in his 

prayer. 
The signs of a battle lost within. 
The pain of a soul in the coils of sin. 



Then a whisper of scandal linked his 

name 
With broken vows and a life of blame; 
And the people looked askance on him 
As he walked among them sullen and 

grim, 
111 at ease, and bitter of word. 
And prompt of quarrel with hand or 

sword. 90 

None knew how, with prayer and fast- 
ing still, 
He strove in the bonds of his evil will; 
But he shook himself like Samson at 

length. 
And girded anew his loins of strength, 
And bade the crier go up and down 
And call together the wondering town. 

Jeer and murmur and shaking of head 
Ceased as he rose in his place and said: 
" Men, brethren, and fathers, well ye 

know 
How I came among you a year ago, 100 
Strong in the faith that my soul was 

freed 
From sin of feeling, or thought, or deed. 

" I have sinned, I own it with grief and 

shame. 
But not with a lie on my lips I came. 
In my blindness I verily thought my 

heart 
Swept and garnished in every part. 
He chargeth His angels with folly ; He 

sees 
The heavens unclean. Was I more 

than these ? 

" I urge no plea. At your feet I lay 
The trust you gave me, and go my 

way. 1 10 

Hate me or pity me, as you will. 
The Lord will have mercy on sinners 

still; 
And I, who am chiefest, say to all, 
Watch and pray, lest ye also fall." 

No voice made answer: a sob so low 
That only his quickened ear could know 
Smote his heart with a bitter pain. 
As into the forest he rode again, 
And the veil of its oaken leaves shut 

down 
On his latest glimpse of Cocheco 

town. "o 



144 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



(Vvstal-cloar on the man of sin 

Tlic strcains flashed up, and the sky 

shone in; 
On his cheek of fever the cool wind 

blew, 
The leaves dropped on him their tears 

of dew, 
And angels of God, in the pure, sweet 

puise 
Of flowers, looked on liini with sad 

surprise. 

Was his ear at fault that brook and 
breeze 

Sang in their saddest of minor 
keys ? 

What was it the mournful wood- 
thrush said ? 

What whispered the pine-trees over- 
head? 130 

Did lie hear the Voice on his lonely 
way 

That Adam heard in the cool of day ? 

Into the desert alone rode he, 
Alone with the Infinite Purity; 
And, bowing his soul to its tender re- 
buke. 
As Peter did to the Master's look. 
He measured his path with prayers of 

pain 
For peace with God and nature again. 

And in after years to Cocheco came 
The bruit of a once familiar name; 140 
How among tlie Dutch of New' Nether- 
lands, 
From wild Danskamer to Haarlem 

sands, 
A penitent soldier preached the 

Word, 
And smote the heathen with Gideon's 
sword ! 

And the heart of Boston was glad to 

hear 
How he harried the foe on tlie long 

frontier, 
And heaped on the land against him 

barred 
The coals of his generous watch and 

ward. 
Frailest and bravest! the Ray State 

still 
Counts with her worthies John Under- 

hill, ISO 



CONDUCTOR BRADLEY 

Conductor Bradley, (always may 
his name 

Be said with reverence !) as the swift 
doom came. 

Smitten to death, a crushed and man- 
gled frame, 

Sank, with the brake he grasped just 

where he stood 
To do the utmost that a brave man 

could. 
And die, if needful, as a true man 

should. 

Men stooped above him; women 

dropped their tears 
On that poor wreck beyond all hopes 

or fears. 
Lost in the strength and glory of his 

years. 

What heard they ? Lo ! the ghastly 

lips of pain. 
Dead to all thought save duty's, 

moved again: 
" Put out the signals for the other 

train!" 

No nobler utterance since the world 

began 
From lips of saint or martyr ever ran, 
Electric, tlirough the sympathies of 

man. 

Ah me ! how poor and noteless seem 
to this 

The sick-l>ed dramas of self-conscious- 
ness. 

Our sensvial fears of pain and hopes of 
bliss ! 

Oh, grand, supreme endeavor ! Not in 

vain 
That last brave act of failing tongue 

and brain ! 
Freighted with life the downward 

rushing train, 

Following the wrecked one, as wave 

follows wave. 
Obeyed the warning which the dead 

lips gave. 
Others he saved, himself he could not 

save. 



THE WITCH OF WENHAM 



H5 



Nay, the lost life was saved. He is not 

dead 
Who in his record still the earth shall 

tread 
With God's clear aureole shining 

round his head. 

We bow as in the dust, with all our 
pride 

Of virtue dwarfed the noble deed be- 
side. 

God give us grace to live as Bradley- 
died! 



THE WITCH OF WENHAM 



Along Crane River's sunny slopes 
Blew warm the winds of May, 

And over Naumkeag's ancient oaks 
The green outgrew the gray. 

The grass was green on Rial-side, 

The early birds at will 
Waked up the violet in its dell, 

The wind-flower on its hill. 

"Where go you, in your Sunday coat. 
Son Andrew, tell me, pray." lo 

" For striped perch in Wenham Lake 
I go to fish to-day." 

" Unharmed of thee in Wenham Lake 
The mottled perch shall be: 

A blue-eyed witch sits on the bank 
And weaves her net for thee, 

" She weaves her golden hair; she sings 
Her spell-song low and faint; 

The wickedest witch in Salem jail 
Is to that girl a saint." 20 

" Nay, mother, hold thy cruel tongue; 

God knows," the young man cried, 
" He never made a whiter soul 

Than hers by Wenham side. 

" She tends her mother sick and blind. 

And every want supplies; 
To her above the blessed Book 

She lends her soft blue eyes. 

" Her voice is glad with holy songs, 
Her lips are sweet with prayer; 30 



Go where you will, in ten miles round 
Is none more good and fair." 

" Son Andrew, for the love of God 
And of thy mother, stay ! " 

She clasped her hands, she wept aloud, 
But Andrew rode away. 

" O reverend sir, my Andrew's soul 
The Wenham witch has caught; 

She holds him with the curled go-Id 
Whereof her snare is wrought. 40 

"She charms him with her great blue 
eyes. 

She binds him with her hair; 
Oh, break the spell with holy words, 

Unbind him with a prayer!" 

"Take heart," the painful preacher 
said, 

"This mischief shall not be; 
The witch shall perish in her sins 

And Andrew shall go free. 

" Our poor Ann Putnam testifies 
She saw her weave a spell, so 

Bare-armed, loose-haired, at full of 
moon, 
Around a dried-up well. 

" ' Spring up, O well ! ' she softly sang 

The Hebrew's old refrain 
(For Satan uses Bible words), 

Till water flowed amain. 

"And many a goodwife heard her 
speak 

By Wenham water words 
That made the buttercups take wings 

And turn to yellow birds. 60 

" They say thatswarmingwild bees seek 
The hive at her command; 

And fishes swim to take their food 
From out her dainty hand. 

" Meek as she sits in meeting-time, 

The godly minister 
Notes well the spell that doth compel 

The young men's eyes to her. 

" The mole upon her dimpled chin 
Is Satan's seal and sign; 70 

Her lips are red with evil bread 
And stain of unblest wine. 



146 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



" For Tituba, my Indian, saith 

At Qiuusycuns she took 
The Hlack Man's godless sacrament 

And signed his dreadful book. 

"Last night my sore-afllicted child 
Against the young witch cried. 

To take her Marshal Herrick rides 
Even now to Wenhani side." 80 

The marshal in his saddle sat, 

His daughter at his knee; 
"I go to fetch that arrant witch. 

Thy fair playmate," quoth he. 

" Her spectre walks the parsonage. 
And haunts both hall and stair; 

They know her by the great blue 
eyes 
And floating gold of hair." 

" They lie, they lie, my father dear ! 

No foul old witch is she, 90 

But sweet and good and crystal-pure 

As Wenham waters be." 

" I tell thee, child, the Lord hath set 

Before us good and ill. 
And woe to all whose carnal loves 

Oppose His righteous will. 

" Between Him and the powers of hell 
Choose thou, my child, to-day: 

No sparing hand, no pitying eye, 
When God commands to slay ! " 100 

He went his way; the old wives shook 
With fear as he drew nigh; 

The cliildren in the dooryards held 
Their breath as he passed by. 

Too well they knew the gaunt gray 
horse 

The grim witch-hunter rode, 
The pale Apocalyptic beast 

By grisly Death bestrode. 



II 



Oh. fair the face of -Wenham Lake 
Upon the young girl's shone, no 

Her tender nioutli, lier dreaming eyes. 
Her yellow hair outblown. 

liy happy youth and love attuned 
To natural harmonies, 



The singing birds, the whispering 
wind. 
She sat beneath the trees. 

Sat shaping for her bridal dress 
Her mother's wedding gown. 

When lo ! the marshal, writ in hand, 
From Alford hill rode down. 120 

His face was hard with cruel fear, 
He grasped the maiden's hands: 

"Come with me unto Salem town, 
For so the law commands ! " 

"Oh, let me to my mother say 

Farewell before I go ! " 
He closer tied her little hands 

Unto his saddle bow. 

" Unhand me," cried she piteously, 
" For thy sweet daughter's sake. "130 

" I '11 keep my daughter safe," he said, 
" From the witch of Wenham Lake." 

" Oh, leave me for my mother's sake, 
She needs my eyes to see." 

" Those eyes, young witch, the crow 
shall peck 
From off the gallows-tree." 

He bore her to a farm-house old 

And up its stairway long. 
And closed on her the garret-door 

With iron bolted strong. 140 

The day died out, the night came 
down : 
Her evening prayer she said. 
While, through the dark, strange faces 
seemed 
To mock her as she prayed. 

The present horror deepened all 
The fears her cliildhood knew; 

The awe wherewith the air was filled 
With every breath she drew. 

And could it be, she trembling asked, 
Some secret thought or sin 150 

Had shut good angels from her heart 
And let the bad ones in ? 

Had she in some forgotten dream 
Let go lier hold on Heaven, 

And sold herself unwittingly 
To spirits unforgiven ? 



THE WITCH OF WENHAM 



147 




•• ' God keep her from the evil eye, 
And harm of witch ! ' he cried ' 



Oh, weird and still the dark hours 
passed; 

No human sound she heard, 
But up and down the chimney stack 

The swallows moaned and stirred. 

And o'er her, with a dread surmise 
Of evil sight and sound, 162 

The blind bats on their leathern wings 
Went wheeling round and round. 



Low hanging in the midnight sky 
Looked in a half-faced moon. 

Was it a dream, or did she hear 
Her lover's whistled tune ? 

She forced the oaken scuttle back; 

A whisper reached her ear: 
"Shde down the roof to me," 
said, 

" So softly none may hear." 



170 
it 



148 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



She slid alonji tlie sloping roof 
Till from its eaves she hung, 

And felt the loosened shingles yield 
To wliicli her fingers clung. 

Below, her lover stretched his hands 
And touched her feet so small ;^^ 

"Drop down to me, dear heart," he 
said, 
"My arms shall break the fall." iSo 

He set her on his pillion soft, 
Her arms about him twined; 

And, noiseless as if velvet-shod, 
They left the house behind. 

But when they reached the open way, 

Full free the rein he cast; 
Oh, never through the mirk mid- 
night 

Rode man and maid more fast. 

Along the wild wood-paths they sped, 
The bridgeless streams they swam; 

At set of moon they passed the Bass, 
At sunrise Agawam. 192 

At high noon on the Merrimac 

The ancient ferryman 
Forgot, at times, his idle oars, 

So fair a freight to scan. 

And when from off his grounded boat 
He saw them mount and ride, 

" God keep her from the evil eye. 
And harm of witch ! " he cried. 200 

The maiden laughed, as youth will 
laugh 
At all its fears gone by; 
" He does not know," she whispered 
low, 
" A little witch am I." 

All day he urged his weary horse, 

And, in the red sundown, 
Drew rein before a friendly door 

In distant Berwick town. 

A fellow-feeling for the wronged 
The (Quaker people felt; 210 

And safe beside their kindly hearths 
The hunted maiden dwelt, 

Until from off its l)reast the land 
The haunting horror threw, 



And hatred, l)orn of ghastly dreams, 
To shame and pity grew. 

Sad were the year's spring morns, and 
sad 
Its golden summer day. 
But blithe and glad its withered 
fields, 
And skies of ashen gray; 220 

For spell and charm had power no 
more. 

The spectres ceased to roam. 
And scattered households knelt again 

Around the hearths of home. 

And when once more by Beaver 
Dam 

The meadow-lark outsang, 
And once again on all the hills 

The early violets sprang, 

And all the windy pasture slopes 
Lay green within the arms 230 

Of creeks that bore the salted sea 
To pleasant inland farms, 

The smith filed off the chains he 
forged, 

The jail-bolts backward fell; 
And youth and hoary age came forth 

Like souls escaped from hell. 



KING SOLOMON AND THE 
ANTS 

Out from Jerusalem 

The king rode with his great 
War chiefs and lords of state, 

And Sheba's queen with them; 

Comely, but black withal, 

To whom, perchance, belongs 
That wondrous Song of songs. 

Sensuous and mystical, 

Whereto devout souls turn 

In fond, ecstatic dream, 10 

And through its earth-born theme 

The Love of loves discern. 

Proud in the Syrian sun, 

In gold and purple sheen, 

The dusky Ethiop queen 
Smiled on King Solomon. 



IN THE ''OLD SOUTH " 



149 



Wisest of men, he knew 
The languages of all 
The creatures great or small 

That trod the earth or flew. ?o 

Across an ant-hill led 

The king's path, and he heard 
Its small folk, and their word 

He thus interpreted: 

" Here comes the king men greet 
As wise and good and just. 
To crush us in the dust 

Under his heedless feet." 

The great king bowed his head, 

And saw the wide surprise 30 

Of the Queen of Sheba's eyes 

As he told her what they said. 

" O king ! " she whispered sweet, 
" Too happy fate have they 
Who perish in thy way 

Beneath thy gracious feet ! 

"Thou of the God-lent crown, 
Shall these vile creatures dare 
Murmur against thee where 

The knees of kings kneel down?" 40 

" Nay," Solomon replied, 

" The wise and strong should seek 

The welfare of the weak," 
And turned his horse aside. 

His train, with quick alarm. 
Curved with their leader round 
The ant-hill's peopled mound. 

And left it free from harm. 

The jewelled head bent low; 

" O king ! " she said, " henceforth so 

The secret of thy worth 
And wisdom well 1 know. 

" Happy must be the State 
Whose ruler heedeth more 
The murmurs of the poor 

Than flatteries of the great." 



IN THE "OLD SOUTH" 

She came and stood in the Old South 
Church, 
A wonder and a sign, 



With a look the old-time sibyls wore, 
Half-crazed and half-divine. 

Save the mournful sackcloth about her 

wound, 

Unclothed as the primal mother, 

With hmbs that trembled and eyes 

that blazed 

With a fire she dare not smother. 

Loose on her shoulders fell her hair, 
With sprinkled ashes gray; 10 

She stood in the broad aisle strange 
and weird 
As a soul at the judgment day. 

And the minister paused in his ser- 
mon's midst, 
And the people held their breath. 
For these were the words the maiden 
spoke 
Through lips as the lips of death: 

"Thus saith the Lord, witli equal feet 
All men my courts shall tread. 

And priest and ruler no more shall 
eat 
My people up like bread ! 20 

" Repent ! repent ! ere the Lord shall 
speak 

In thunder and breaking seals ! 
Let all souls worship Him in the way 

His light within reveals." 

She shook the dust from her naked 
feet. 
And her sackcloth closer drew, 
And into the porch of the awe-hushed 
church 
She passed like a ghost from view. 

They whipped her away at the tail o' 
the cart 
Through half the streets of the 
town, 30 

But the words she uttered that day 
nor fire 
Could burn nor water drown. 

And now the aisles of the ancient 
church 
By equal feet are trod. 
And the bell that swings in its belfry 
rings 
Freedom to worship God I 



I^O 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



And now whenever a wrong is done 

It thrills the conscious walls; 
The stone from the l)a.seinent cries 
aloud 
And the beam from the timber 
calls. 40 

There are steeple-houses on every 
liand, 
And pulpits that bless and ban, 
And the Lord will not grudge the sin- 
gle church 
That is set apart for man. 

For in two commandments are all the 
law 

And the prophets under the sun, 
And the first is last and the last is first, 

And the twain are verily one. 

So long as Boston shall Boston be, 
And her bay-tides rise and fall, 50 

Shall freedom stand in the Old South 
Church 
And plead for the rights of all ! 



THE HENCHMAN 

My lady walks her morning round, 
My lady's page her fleet greyhound, 
My lady's hair the fond winds stir, 
And all tlie birds make songs for her. 

Her thrushes sing in Rathburn bow- 
ers, 
And Hatliburn side is gay with flowers. 
Hut ne'er hke hers, in flower or bird, 
Was beauty seen or music heard. 

The distance of the stars is hers; 
The least of all her worshippers, 10 
The dust beneath her dainty heel, 
She knows not that I see or feel. 

Oh, proud and calm! — she cannot 

know 
Where'er she goes with her I go; 
Oh, cold and fair ! — she cannot guess 
I kneel to share her hound's caress ! 

Gay knights l)eside her hunt and 

hawk, 
I rob their ears of her sweet talk; 
Her suitors come from east and west, 
I steal her smiles from every guest. 20 



Unheard of her, in loving words, 
I greet her with the song of birds; 
I reach her with her green-armed bow- 
ers, 
I kiss her with the lips of flowers. 

The hound and I are on her trail. 
The wind and I uplift her veil; 
As if the calm, cold moon she were, 
And I the tide, I follow her. 

As unrebuked as they, I share 
The license of the sun and air, 30 

And in a common homage hide 
My worship from her scorn and 
pride. 

World-wide apart, and yet so near, 
I breathe her charmed atmosphere, 
Wherein to her my service brings 
The reverence due to holy things. 

Her maiden pride, her haughty name, 
My dumb devotion shall not shame; 
The love that no return doth crave 
To knightly levels lifts the slave. 40 

No lance have I, in joust or fight, 
To splinter in my lady's sight; 
But, at her feet, how blest were I 
For anv need of hers to die ! 



THE DEAD FEAST OF THE 
KOL-FOLK 

We have opened the door, 

Once, twice, thrice ! 
We have swept the floor, 

We have boiled the rice. 
Come hither, come liither ! 
Come from the far lands. 
Come from the star lands, 

Come as before ! 
We lived long together, 
We loved one another; i 

Come back to our life. 
Come father, come mother. 
Come sister and brother, 

Child, husband, and wife. 
For you we are sighing. 
Come take your old places. 
Come look in our faces, 
The dead on the dying. 
Come home ! 



THE KHAN'S DEVIL 



151 



We have opened the door, 20 

Once, twice, thrice ! 
We have kindled the coals, 

And we boil the rice 
For the feast of souls. 

Come hither, come hither! 
Think not we fear you, 
Whose hearts are so near you. 
Come tenderly thought on. 
Come all unforgotten, 
Come from the shadow-lands, 30 
From the dim meadow-lands 
Where the pale grasses bend 

Low to our sighing. 
Come father, come mother, 
Come sister and brotlier, 
Come husband and friend. 

The dead to the dying. 
Come home! 

We have opened the door 

You entered so oft; 40 

For the feast of souls 
We have kindled the coals, 

And we boil the rice soft. 
Come you who are dearest 
To us, who are nearest, 
Come hither, come hither, ' 
From out the wild weather; 
The storm clouds are flying, 
The peepul is sighing; 

Come in from the rain. 50 

Come father, come mother. 
Come sister and brother, 
Come husband and lover, 
Beneath our roof-cover. 

Look on us again. 
The dead on the dying, 
Come home ! 

We have opened the door ! 
For the feast of souls 
We have kindled the coals 60 
We may kindle no more ! 
Snake, fever, and famine, 
The curse of the Brahmin, 

The sun and the dew. 
They burn us, they bite us. 
They waste us and smite us; 

Our days are but few ! 
In strange lands far yonder 
To wonder and wander 

We hasten to you. 70 

List then to our sighing. 

While yet we are here: 
Nor seeing nor hearing. 



We wait without fearing 
To feel you draw near. 
O dead, to the dying 
Come home ! 



THE KHAN'S DEVIL 

The Khan came from Bokhara town 
To Hamza, santon of renown. 

" My head is sick, my hands are weak; 
Thy help, O holy man, I seek." 

In silence marking for a space 

The Khan's red eyes and purple face, 

Thick voice, and loose, uncertain 

tread, 
" Thou hast a devil ! " Hamza said. 

" Allah forbid ! " exclaimed the Khan. 
" Rid me of him at once, O man ! " 10 

" Nay," Hamza said, " no spell of 

mine 
Can slay that cursed thing of thine. 

" Leave feast and wine, go forth and 

drink 
Water of healing on the brink 

" Where clear and cold from mountain 

snows. 
The Nahr el Zeben downward flows. 

" Six moons remain, then come to me; 
May Allah's pity go with thee!" 

Awestruck, from feast and wine the 

Khan 
Went forth where Nahr el Zeben ran. 20 

Roots were his food, the desert dust 
His bed, the water quenched his 
thirst; 

And when the sixth moon's scimitar 
Curved sharp above the evening star, 

He sought again the santon's door. 
Not weak and trembling as before, 

But strong of limb and clear of 

brain ; 
" Behold," he said, " the fiend is slain." 



152 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



"Xav, " Hainza answered, "starved 

and drowned, 
Tlie curst one lies in death-like 

swound. 30 

" Hut evil l)reaks the strongest gyves, 
And jins like him have charmed lives. 

" One beaker of the juice of grape 
May call him up in living shape. 

" When tiie red wine of Badakshan 
Sparkles for thee, beware, O Khan ! 

" With water quench the fire within. 
And drown each day thy devilkin!" 

Thenceforth the great Khan shunned 
the cup 39 

As Shitan's own, though offered up, 

With laughing eyes and jewelled 

hands, 
By y arkand's maids and Samarcand's. 

And, in the lofty vestibule 

Of the medress of Kaush Kodul, 

The students of the holy law 
A golden-lettered tablet saw, 

With tlioso words, by a cunning hand, 
Graved on it at the Khan's command: 

" In Allah's name, to him who hath 
A devil. Khan el Hamed saith, 50 

" Wisely our Prophet cursed the vine: 
The fiend that loves the breath of wine 

" Xo prayer can slay, no marabout 
Nor Meccan dervis can drive out. 

"I, Khan el Hamed, know the charm 
That robs him of his power to harm. 

" Drown him, O Islam's child ! the spell 
To save thee lies in tank and well !" 



THE KING'S MISSIVE 

1661 

Under the great hill sloping ])are 
To cove and meadow and Common 
lot. 



In his council chamber and oaken 

chair, 
Sat the worshipful Governor Endi- 

cott. 
A grave, strong man, who knew no 

peer 
In the Pilgrim land, where he ruled in 

fear 
Of God, not man, and for good or ill 
Held his trust with an iron will. 

He had shorn with his sword the cross 

from out 
The flag, and cloven the May-pole 

down, 10 

Harried the heathen round about, 
And whipped the Quakers from 

town to town. 
Earnest and honest, a man at need 
Td burn like a torch for his own harsh 

creed, 
He kept with the flaming brand of his 

zeal 
The gate of the holy common weal. 

His brow was clouded, his eye was 

stern. 
With a look of mingled sorrow and 

wrath ; 
"Woe's me!" he murmured: "at 

every turn 
The pestilent Quakers are in my 

path ! 20 

Some we have scourged, and banished 

some, 
Some hanged, more doomed, and still 

they come, 
Fast as the tide of yon bay sets 

. in, ^ 
Sowing their heresy's seed of sin. 

" Did we count on this ? Did we leave 

behind 
The graves of our kin, the comfort 

and ease 
Of our English hearths and homes, to 

find 
Troublers of Israel such as these ? 
Shall I spare? Shall I pity them? 

God forbid! 
I will do as the prophet to Agag 

did: 30 

They come to poison the wells of the 

Word, 
I will hew them in pieces before the 

Lord!" 



THE KING'S MISSIVE 



153 




John Endicott 



The door swung open, and Rawson 

the clerk 
Entered, and whispered under 

breath, 
" There waits below for the hangman's 

work 
A fellow banished on pain of death — 
Shattuck, of Salem, unhealed of the 

whip, 
Brought over in Master Goldsmith's 

ship 
At anchor here in a Christian port, 
With freight of the devil and all his 

sort I" 40 



Twice and thrice on the chamber 
floor 
Striding fiercely from wall to 
wall, 

" The Lord do so to me and more," 
The Governor cried, " if I hang not 
all! 

Bring hither the Quaker." Calm, se- 
date. 

With the look of a man at ease with 
fate, 

Into that presence grim and dread 

Came Samuel Shattuck, with hat on 
head. 



'54 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



'•OtT with the knave's hat!" An an- 

f^rv hand 
Smote down the offence; but the 

wearer said, 50 

Witli a (luiet smile, "By the king's 

command 
I bear his message and stand in his 

stead." 
In the Governor's hand a missive lie 

laid 
With the royal arms on its seal dis- 
played, 
And the proud man spake as he gazed 

thereat, 
Uncovering, "Give Mr. Shattuck his 

hat." 

He turned to the Quaker, bowing 
low, — 
" The king commandeth your 
friends' release; 

Doubt not he shall be obeyed, al- 
though 
To his subjects' sorrow and sin's in- 
crease. 60 

What he here enjoineth, John Endi- 
cott, 

His loyal servant, questioneth not. 

Vuu are free ! God grant the spirit you 
own 

May take you from us to parts un- 
known." 

So the door of the jail was open cast. 
And, like Daniel, out of the lion's den 

Tencler youth and girlhood passed, 
With age-bowed women and gray- 
locked men. 

And the voice of one appointed to die 

Was lifted in praise and thanks on 
high, 70 

And the little maid from New Nether- 
lands 

Kis-sed, in her joy, the doomed man's 
hands. 

And one, who.se call was to minister 
To the souls in prison, beside him 

went. 
An ancient woman, bearing with her 
The linen .shroud for his burial 

nieant. 
For she, not counting her owti life 

dear. 
In the .strength of a love that cast out 

fear, 



Had watched and served where her 
brethren died. 

Like those who waited the cross be- 
side. 80 

One moment they paused on their 
way to look 
On the martyr graves by the Com- 
mon side. 

And much scourged Wharton of Sa- 
lem took 
His burden of prophecy up and 
cried : 

" Rest, souls of the valiant ! Not in vain 

Have ye borne the Master's cross of 
pain; 

Ye have fought the fight, ye are 
victors crowned, 

With a fourfold chain ye have Satan 
bound!" 

The autumn haze lay soft and still 
On wood and meadow and upland 
farms ; 90 

On the brow of Snow Hill the great 
windmill 
Slowly and lazily swung its arms; 
Broad in the sunshine stretched away, 
With its capes and islands, the tur- 
quoise bay; 
And over water and dusk of pines 
Blue hills hfted their faint outlines. 

The topaz leaves of the walnut 
glowed, 

The sumach added its crimson fleck, 
And double in air and water showed 

The tinted maples along the Neck; 
Through frost flower clusters of pale 
star-mist, 10 1 

And gentian fringes of amethyst, 
And royal plumes of golden-rod. 
The grazing cattle on Gentry trod. 

But as they who see not, the Quakers 

saw 
The world about them; they only 

thought 
With deep thanksgiving and pious awe 
On the great deliverance God had 

wrought. 
Through lane and alley the gazing 

town 109 

Noisily followed them up and down; 
Some with scoffing and brutal jeer. 
Some with pity and words of cheer. 



THE KING'S MISSIVE 



15s 




«' So passed the Quakers through Boston town " 



One brave voice rose above the din. 

Upsall, gray with his length of days, 
Cried from the door of his Red Lion 

Inn: 
"Men of Boston, give God the 

praise ! 
No more shall innocent blood call 

down 
The bolts of wrath on your guilty 

town. 
The freedom of worship, dear to you, 
Is dear to all, and to all is due. 12° 



" I see the vision of days to come, 
When your beautiful City of the 

Bay 
Shall be Christian liberty's chosen 

home. 
And none shall his neighbor's rights 

gainsay. 
The varying notes of worship shall 

blend 
And as one great prayer to God ascend, 
And hands of mutual charity raise 
Walls of salvation and gates of praise." 



156 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



So passed the Quakers through Boston 

town, 
Whose painful ministers sighed to 

st:e 130 

Tlie walls of their sheep-fold falling 

down, 
And wolves of heresy prowling free. 
But the years went on, and brought 

no wrong; 
With milder counsels the State grew 

strong, 
As outward Letter and inward Light 
Kept the l)alancc of truth aright. 

The Puritan spirit perishing not, 
To Concord's yeomen the signal 
sent, 

And spake in the voice of the cannon- 
shot 
That severed the chains of a conti- 
nent. 140 

With its gentler mission of peace and 
good-will 

The thought of the Quaker is living 
still. 

And tiie freedom of soul he prophe- 
sied 

Is gospel and law where the martyrs 
died. 



VALUATION 

The old Squire said, as he stood by his 
gate, 
And his neighbor, the Deacon, went 

i>y, 

" In spite of my bank stock and real 
estate. 
You are better off. Deacon, than I. 

"We're both growing old, and the 
end's drawing near, 
You have less of this world to re- 
sign, 
But in Heaven's appraisal your assests 
I fear. 
Will reckon up greater than mine. 

"They say I am rich, but I'm feeling 
so poor, 
I wish I could swap with you even: 
The pounds I liave lived for and laid 
up in store 
For the shillings and pence you 
have given." 



" Well, Squire," said the Deacon, with 
shrewd common sense. 
While his eye had a twinkle of fun, 

" Let your pounds take the w^ay of my 
shillings and pence, 

And the thing can be easily done!" 



RABBI ISHMAEL 

The Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and 

sin 
Of the world heavy upon him, enter- 
ing in 
The Holy of Holies, saw an awful Face 
With terrible splendor filling all the 

place. 
"O Ishmael Ben Elisha!" said a 

voice, 
"What seekest thou? What blessing 

is thy choice?" 
And, knowing that he stood before the 

Lord, 
Within the shadow of the cherubim, 
Wide-winged between the blinding 

light and him. 
He bowed himself, and uttered not a 

word. 
But in the silence of his soul was prayer: 
'' O Thou Eternal ! I am one of all, 
And nothing ask that others may not 

share. 
Thou art almighty; we are weak and 

small. 
And yet Thy children : let Thy mercy 

spare!" 
Trembling, he raised his eyes, and in 

the place 
Of the insufferable glory, lo ! a face 
Of more than mortal tenderness, that 

bent 
Graciously dow^n in token of assent, 
And, smiling, vanished ! With strange 

joy ^late, 
The wondering Rabbi sought the tem- 
ple's gate. 
Radiant as Moses from the Mount, he 

stood 
And cried aloud unto the multitude: 
" O Israel, hear ! The Lord our God is 

good! 
Mine eyes have seen His glory and His 

grace; 
Beyond His judgments shall His love 

endure; 
The mercy of the All Merciful is sure 1 " 



THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS 



157 



THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRA- 
DORE 

A DREAR and desolate shore ! 
Where no tree unfolds its leaves, 
And never the spring wind weaves 
Green grass for the hunter's tread; 
A land forsaken and dead, 
Where the ghostly icebergs go 
And come with the ebb and flow 

Of the waters of Bradore ! 

A wanderer, from the land 

By summer breezes fanned, 10 

Looked round him, awed, subdued, 

By the dreadful solitude, 

Hearing alone the cry 

Of sea-birds clanging by, 

The crash and grind of the floe, 

Wail of wind and wash of tide. 

" O wretched land ! " he cried, 

" Land of all lands the worst, 

God forsaken and curst ! 

Thy gates of rock should show 20 

The words the Tuscan seer 
Read in the Realm of Woe: 

Hope enter eth not here !" 

Lo ! at his feet there stood 

A block of smooth larch wood. 

Waif of some wandering wave, 

Beside a rock-closed cave 

By Nature fashioned for a grave; 

Safe from the ravening bear 

And fierce fowl of the air, 30 

Wherein to rest was laid 

A twenty summers' maid, 

Whose blood had equal share 

Of the lands of vine and snow, 

Half French, half Eskimo. 

In letters uneffaced. 

Upon the block were traced 

The grief and hope of man, 

And thus the legend ran: 

" We loved her ! 40 

Words cannot tell how well ! 

We loved her ! 

God loved her ! 
And called her home to peace and rest. 

We love her !" 

The stranger paused and read. 
" O winter land ! " he said, 
"Thy right to be I own; 
God leaves thee not alone. 



And if thy fierce winds blow so 

Over drear wastes of rock and snow, 
And at thy iron gates 
The ghostly iceberg waits. 

Thy homes and hearts are dear. 
Thy sorrow o'er thy sacred dust 
Is sanctified by hope and trust; 

God's love and man's are here. 
And love where'er it goes 
Makes its own atmosphere; 
Its flowers of Paradise 60 

Take root in the eternal ice. 

And bloom through Polar snows ! " 



THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS 

From the green Amesbury hill which 

bears the name 
Of that half mythic ancestor of mine 
Who trod its slopes two hundred years 

ago, 
Down the long valley of the Merrimac, 
Midway between me and the river's 

mouth, 
I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest 
Among Deer Island's immemorial 

pines, 
Crowning the crag on which the sunset 

breaks 
Its last red arrow. Many a tale and 

song, 
Which thou hast told or sung, I call to 

mind, 10 

Softening with silvery mist the woods 

and hills, 
The out-thrust headlands and inreach- 

ing bays 
Of our northeastern coast-line, trend- 
ing where 
The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill 

blockade 
Of icebergs stranded at its northern 

gate. 

To thee the echoes of the Island Sound 
Answer not vainly, nor in vain the 

moan 
Of the South Breaker prophesying 

storm. 
And thou hast listened, like myself, to 

men 
Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies 20 
Like a fell spider in its web of fog. 
Or where the Grand Bank shallows 

with the wrecks 



iS8 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Of sunken fishers, and to whom 
strange isk's 

And frost-rinuned hays and trading 
stations seem 

I'amihar as Great Neck and Kettle 
Cove, 

Nubble and Boon, the common names 
of home. 

So let me offer thee this lay of mine, 

Simple and homely, lacking much thy 
play 

( )f color and of fancy. If its theme 

And treatment seem to thee befitting 
vouth 30 

Rather than age, let this be my ex- 
cuse: 

It has beguiled some heavy hours and 
called 

Some pleasant memories up; and, bet- 
ter still. 

Occasion lent me for a kindly word 

To one who is my neighbor and my 
friend. 



Tlie skipper sailed out of the harbor 
mouth, 

Leaving the apple-bloom of the South 
For the ice of the Eastern seas, 
In his fisliing schooner Breeze. 

Handsome and brave and young was 
he, 40 

And the maids of Newbury sighed to 
see 

His lessening white sail fall 
I'nder the sea's blue wail. 

Through the Northern Gulf and the 
misty screen 

Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine, 
St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon, 
The little lireeze sailed on, 

Backward and forward, along the 
shore 

Of lorn and desolate Labrador, 

And found at last her way 50 

To the Seven Islands Bay. 

The little hamlet, nestling below 
Great hills white with lingering snow. 
With its tin-roofed chapel stood 
Half hid in the dwarf spruce 
wood ; 



Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last 

outpost 
Of summer upon the dreary coast, 

With its gardens small and spare, 

Sad in the frosty air. 

Hard by where the skipper's schooner 
lay, 60 

A fisherman's cottage looked away 
Over isle and bay, and behind 
On mountains dim-defined. 

And there twin sisters, fair and young, 
Laughed with their stranger guest, 
and sung 
In their native tongues the lays 
Of the old Provencal days. 

Alike were they, save the faint outline 
Of a scar on Suzette's forehead fine; 
And both, it so befell, 70 

Loved the heretic stranger well. 

Both were pleasant to look upon. 
But the heart of the skipper clave to 
one; 
Though less by his eye than heart 
He knew the twain apart. 

Despite of alien race and creed. 
Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed ; 
And the mother's wrath was vain 
As the sister's jealous pain. 

The shrill-tongued mistress her house 

forbade, 80 

And solemn warning was sternly said 

By the black-robed priest, whose 

word 
As law the hamlet heard. 

But half by voice and half by signs 
The skipper said, " A warm sun shines 

On the green-banked Merrimac; 

Wait, watch, till I come back. 

"And when you see, from my masthead, 
The signal ifly of a kerchief red, 

My boat on the shore shall wait; 

Come, when the night is late." 91 

Ah ! weighed with childhood's haunts 
and friends, 

And all that the home sky overbends, 
Did ever yoimg love fail 
To turn the trembling scale ? 



THE BAY OF SEVEN ISLANDS 



159 



Under the night, on the wet sea 
sands, 

Slowly unclasped their plighted hands : 
One to the cottage hearth, 
And one to his sailor's berth. 

What was it the parting lovers 
heard? loo 

Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird, 
But a listener's stealthy tread 
On the rock-moss, crisp and dead. 

He weighed his anchor, and fished 

once more 
By the black coast-line of Labrador; 
And by love and the north wind 

driven. 
Sailed back to the Islands Seven. 

In the sunset's glow the sisters twain 
Saw the Breeze come sailing in again; 
Said Suzette, "Mother dear, no 
The heretic's sail is here." 

*'Go, Marguerite, to your room, and 

hide; 
Your door shall be bolted!" the mo- 
ther cried: 
While Suzette, ill at ease, 
Watched the red sign of the 
Breeze, 

At midnight, down to the waiting 
skiff 

She stole in the shadow of the cliff; 
And out of the Bay's mouth ran 
The schooner with maid and man. 

And all night long, on a restless bed, 
Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite 
said: 121 

And thought of her lover's pain 

Waiting for her in vain. 

Did he pace the sands ? Did he pause 

to hear 
The sound of her light step drawing 
near? 
And, as the slow hours passed. 
Would he doubt her faith at last ? 

But when she saw through the misty 
pane. 

The morning break on a sea of rain, 
Could even her love avail 130 

To follow his vanished sail? 



Meantime the Breeze, with favoring 
wind. 

Left the rugged Moisic hills behind, 
And heard from an unseen shore 
The falls of Manitou roar. 

On the morrow's morn in the thick, 

gray weather 
They sat on the reeling deck together, 

Lover and counterfeit 

Of hapless Marguerite. 

With a lover's hand, from her fore- 
head fair 140 
He smoothed away her jet-black hair, 

What was it his fond eyes met ? 

The scar of the false Suzette ! 

Fiercely he shouted: "Bear away 
East by north for the Seven Isles 
Bay!" 
The maiden wept and prayed. 
But the ship her helm obeyed. 

Once more the Bay of the Isles they 

found: 

They heard the bell of the chapel 

sound, 149 

And the chant of the dying sung 

In the harsh, wild Indian tongue. 

A feeling of mystery, change, and awe 
Was in all they heard and all they 
saw: 
Spell-bound the hamlet lay 
In the hush of its lonely bay. 

And when they came to the cottage 

door, 
The mother rose up from her weeping 
sore. 
And with angry gestures met 
The scared look of Suzette. 

"Here is your daughter," the skipper 
said; 160 

" Give me the one I love instead." 

But the woman sternly spake; 

" Go, see if the dead will wake ! " 

He looked. Her sweet face still and 

white 
And strange in the noonday taper 
light. 
She lay on her little bed, 
Withthe cross at her feet and head. 



i6o 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



In a passion of grief the strong man bent 
Down to her face, and, kissing it, went 
Back to tlio waiting Breeze, 170 
Back to the mournful seas. 

Never again to tlie Merrimac 
And Newbury's homes that bark 
came back 
Whether her fate she met 
On the shores of Carraquette, 

Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say ? 

l^ut even yet at Seven Isles Bay 
Is told the ghostly tale 
Of a weird, unspoken sail, 

In the pale, sad light of the Northern 
day 180 

Seen by the blanketed Montagnais, • 
Or s(|uaw, in her small kyack, 
Crossing the spectre's track. 

On the deck a maiden wrings her hands ; 

Her likeness kneels on the gray coast 
sands ; 
One in lier wild despair, 
And one in the trance of prayer. 

She flits before no earthly blast, 
The red sign fluttering from her mast, 
Over the solemn seas, 190 

The ghost of the schooner Breeze ! 



THE WISHING BRIDGE 

Among the legends sung or said 

Ak)ng our rocky shore. 
The Wishing Bridge of Marblehead 

May well be sung once more. 

An hundred years ago (so ran 

The ohl-time story) all 
Good wishes said above its span 

Would, soon or late, befall. 

If pure and earnest, never failed 
The prayers of man or maid i 

For him who on the deep sea sailed. 
For her at home who stayed. 



came two girls from 



Once thither 
school, 

/\nd wislu'd in childish glee: 
And one would be a queen and rule. 

And one the world would see. 



Time passed, with change of hopes 
and fears, 

And in the self-same place, 
Two women, gray with middle years, 

Stood, wondering, face to face. 20 

With wakened memories, as they met, 
They queried what had been: 

"A poor man's wife am I, and yet," 
Said one, "I am a queen. 

" My realm a little homestead is. 
Where, lacking crown and throne, 

I rule by loving services 
And patient toil alone." 

The other said: " The great world lies 
Beyond me as it lay; 30 

O'er love's and duty's boundaries 
My feet may never stray. 

" I see but common sights of home, 
Its common sounds I hear. 

My widowed mother's sick-bed room 
Sufficeth for my sphere. 

" I read to her some pleasant page 

Of travel far and wide. 
And in a dreamy pilgrimage 

We wander side by side. 40 

" And when at last she falls asleep. 

My book becomes to me 
A magic glass: my watch I keep, 

But all the world I see. 

" A farm-wife queen your place you fill, 

While fancy's privilege 
Is mine to walk the earth at will. 

Thanks to the Wishing Bridge." 

" Nay, leave the legend for the truth," 
The other cried, " and say 50 

God gives the wishes of our youth, 
But in His own best way ! " 

HOW THE WOMEN WENT 
FROM DOVER 

1662 

The tossing spray of Cocheco's fall 
Hardened to ice on its rocky wall. 
As through Dover town in the chill, 

gray dawn. 
Three women passed, at the cart-tail 

drawn ! 



HOW THE WOMEN WENT FROM DOVER 




" Through Dover town in the chill, gray dawn, 
Three women passed, at the cart-tail drawn ! " 



Bared to the waist, for the north 

wind's grip 
And keener sting of the constable's 

whip, 
The blood that followed each hissing 

blow 
Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow. 

Priest and ruler, boy and maid 
Followed the dismal cavalcade; i© 
And from door and window, open 

thrown, 
Looked and wondered gaffer and crone. 

" God is ourwitness," the victims cried, 
"We suffer for Him who for all men 
died; 



The wrong ye do has been done before, 
We bear the stripes that the Master 
bore! 

"And thou, O Richard Waldron, for 

whom 
We hear the feet of a coming doom, 
On thy cruel heart and thy hand of 

wrong 
Vengeance is sure, though it tarry 

long. 20 

" In the light of the Lord, a flame we see 
Climb and kindle a proud roof-tree; 
And beneath it an old man lying dead, 
With stains of blood on his hoary 
head." 



l62 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



" Smite, Goodman Hate-Evil! harder 

still!" 
The mafiistrate cried, "Lay on with a 

will 1 
Drive out of their bodies the Father of 

Lies, 
Who through tlicni preaches and pro- 

phctties!" 

So into the forest they held their way, 
Hy winding river and frost-rimmed 

hay, 30 

Over wind-swept hills that felt the 

beat 
Of the winter sea at their icy feet. 

The Indian hunter, searching his 

traps. 
Peered stealthily through the forest 

gaps ; 
And the outlying settler shook his 

head, — 
"They're witches going to jail," he 

said. 

At last a meeting-house came in view; 
A blast on his horn the constable 

blew; 
And the boys of Hampton cried up 

and down 
"The Quakers have come!" to the 

wondering town. 40 

From barn and woodpile the goodman 

came; 
The goodwife quitted her quilting 

frame 
With her child at her breast; and, 

hobbling .slow. 
The grandam followed to see the show. 

Once more the torturing whip was 

swung, 
Once mgre keen lashes the bare flesh 

stung. 
"Oh, spare! they are bleeding!" a 

little maid cried, 
And covered her face the sight to hide. 

A murmur ran round the crowd* 

" Good folks," 
Quoth the constable, busy counting 

the strokes, so 

" No pity to wretches like these is due, 
They have beaten the gospel black 

and blue!" 



Then a pallid woman, in wild-eyed 

fear. 
With her wooden noggin of milk drew 

near. 
"Drink, poor hearts!" a rude hand 

smote 
Her draught away from a parching 

throat. 

" Take heed," one whispered, " they '11 

take your cow 
For fines, as they took your horse and 

plough, 
And the bed from under you." " Even 

so," 
She said; "they are cruel as death, I 

know." 60 

Then on they passed, in the waning 

day, 
Through Seabrook woods, a weariful 

way; 
By great salt meadows and sand-hills 

bare. 
And glimpses of blue sea here and 

there. 

By the meeting-house in Salisbury 

tOWTl, 

The sufferers stood, in the red sun- 
down, 
Bare for the lash ! O pitying Night, 
Drop swift thy curtain and hide the 
sight ! 

With shame in his eye and wrath on 

his lip 
The Salisbury constable dropped his 

whip. 70 

" This warrant means murder foul and 

red; 
Cursed is he who serves it," he said. 

"Show me the order, and meanwhile 

strike 
A blow at your peril!" said Justice 

Pike. 
Of all the rulers the land possessed, 
Wisest and boldest was he and best. 

He scoffed at witchcraft; the priest he 

met 
As man meets man; his feet he set 
Beyond his dark age, standing upright, 
Soul-free, with his face to the morning 

light. 80 



SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST 



163 



He read the warrant: " These convey 
From our 'precincts; at every town on 

the way 
Give each ten lashes." " God judge the 

brute ! 
I tread his order under my foot ! 

"Cut loose these poor ones and let 

them go; 
Come what will of it, all men shall 

know 
No warrant is good, though backed by 

the Crown, 
For whipping women in Salisbury 

town!" 

The hearts of the villagers, half re- 
leased 

From creed of terror and rule of 
priest, 90 

By a primal instinct owned the right 

Of human pity in law's despite. 

For ruth and chivalry only slept. 
His Saxon manhood the yeoman kept; 
Quicker or slower, the same blood ran 
In the Cavalier and the Puritan. 

The Quakers sank on their knees in 

praise 
And thanks. A last, low sunset blaze 
Flashed out from under a cloud, and 

shed 
A golden glory on each bowed head. 100 

The tale is one of an evil time. 
When souls were fettered and thought 

was crime, 
And heresy's whisper above its breath 
Meant shameful scourging and bonds 

and death ! 

What marvel, that hunted and sorely 
tried, 

Even woman rebuked and prophe- 
sied. 

And soft words rarely answered back 

The grim persuasion of whip and rack ! 

If her cry from the whipping-post and 

jail 
Pierced sharp as the Kenite's driven 

nail, no 

O woman, at ease in these happier 

days. 
Forbear to judge of thy sister's ways ! 



How much thy beautiful life may owe 
To her faith and courage thou canst 

not know, 
Nor how from the paths of thy calm 

retreat 
She smoothed the thorns with her 

bleeding feet. 



SAINT GREGORY'S GUEST 

A TALE for Roman guides to tell 
To careless, sight-worn travellers 
still, 

Who pause beside the narrow cell 
Of Gregory on the Caelian Hill. 

One day before the monk's door came 
A beggar, stretching empty palms, 

Fainting and fast-sick, in the name 
Of the Most Holy asking alms. 

And the monk answered, " All I have 
In this poor cell of mine I give, 10 

The silver cup my mother gave; 
In Christ's name take thou it, and 
live." 

Years passed; and, called at last to bear 
The pastoral crook and keys of 
Rome, 
The poor monk, in Saint Peter's chair, 
Sat the crowned lord of Christen- 
dom. 

" Prepare a feast," Saint Gregory 
cried, 
"And let twelve beggars sit 
thereat." 
The beggars came, and one beside. 
An unknown stranger, with them 
sat. 20 

" I asked thee not," the Pontiff spake, 
"O stranger; but if need be thine, 

I bid thee welcome, for the sake 
Of Him who is thy Lord and mine." 

A grave, calm face the stranger raised, 
Like His who on Gennesaret trod, 

Or His on whom the Chaldeans gazed, 
Whose form was as the Son of God. 

" Know'st thou," he said, " thy gift of 
old?" 
And in the hand he lifted up 30 



164 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Tlic PfHitilT marvelled to behold 
Once more his mother's silver cup. 

"Thy prayers and alms have risen, 
and bloom 
Sweetly among the flowers of hea- 
ven. 
I am The Wonderful, through whom 
Whate'er thou askest shall be 
given." 

He spake and vanished. Gregory fell 
With his twelve guests in mute ac- 
cord 
Prone on their faces, knowing well 
Their eyes of flesh had seen the 
Lord. 40 

The old-time legend is not vain; 

Nor vain thy art, Verona's Paul, ' 
Telling it o'er and o'er again 

On igray Vicenza's frescoed wall. 

Still wheresoever pity shares 

Its l)read with sorrow, want, and 
sin, 

And love the beggar's feast prepares. 
The uninvited Guest comes in. 

Unheard, because our ears are dull, 
T'^nseen, because our eyes are dim, 50 

He walks our earth. The Wonderful, 
And all good deeds are done to 
Him. 



BIRCHRROOK MILL 

A NOTELESS stream, the Birchbrook 
runs 

Beneath its leaning trees; 
That low. soft ripple is its own, 

That dull roar is the sea's. 

Of human signs it sees alone 
Tlio distant church spire's tip. 

And, gliost-like, on a blank of gray. 
The white sail of a ship. 

No more a toiler at the wheel, 

It wanders at its will; 10 

Nor dam nor pond is left to tell 
Where once was Birchbrook mill. 

Tlie timliers of that mill have fed 
Long since a farmer's fires; 



His doorsteps are the stones that 
ground 
The harvest of his sires. 

Man trespassed here; but Nature lost 

No right of her domain; 
She waited, and she brought the old 

Wild beauty back again. 20 

By day the sunlight through the 
leaves 

Falls on its moist, green sod, 
And wakes the violet bloom of spring 

And autumn's golden-rod. 

Its birches whisper to the wind, 
The swallow dips her wings 

In the cool spray, and on its banks 
The gray song-sparrow sings. 

But from it, when the dark night 

falls, 

The school-girl shrinks with dread; 

The farmer, home-bound from his 

fields, 31 

Goes by with quickened tread. 

They dare not pause to hear the grind 
Of shadowy stone on stone; 

The plashing of a water-wheel 
Where wheel there now is none. 

Has not a cry of pain been heard 
Above the clattering mill ? 

The pawing of an unseen horse, 

Who waits his mistress still ? ,40 

Yet never to the listener's eye 
Has sight confirmed the sound; 

A wavering Inrch line marks alone 
The vacant pasture ground. 

No ghostly arms fling up to heaven 

The agony of prayer; 
No spectral steed impatient shakes 

His white mane on the air. 

The meaning of that common dread 
No tongue has fitly told; 50 

The secret of the dark surmise 
The brook and birches hold. 

What nameless horror of the past 
Broods here forevermore? 

What ghost his unforgiven sin 
Is grinding o'er and o'er? 



THE TWO ELIZABETHS 



165 



Does, then, immortal memory play 

The actor's tragic part. 
Rehearsals of a mortal life 

And unveiled human heart ? 60 

God's pity spare a guilty soul 

That drama of its ill, 
And let the scenic curtain fall 

On Birchbrook's haunted mill ! 



THE TWO ELIZABETHS 

A. D. 1207 

Read at the unveiling of the bust of 
EHzabethFry atthe Friends' School, Provi- 
dence, R. I. 

Amidst Thuringia's wooded hills she 
dwelt, 
A high-born princess, servant of the 
poor. 
Sweetening with gracious words the 
food she dealt „ 
To starving throngs at Wartburg's 
blazoned door. 

A blinded zealot held her soul in chains, 
Cramped the sweet nature that he 
could not kill. 
Scarred her fair body with his pen- 
ance-pains, 
And gauged her conscience by his 
narrow will. 

God gave her gifts of beauty and of 
grace, 
With fast and vigil she denied 
them all; 10 

Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic 
face, 
She followed meekly at" her stern 
guide's call. 

So drooped and died her home-blown 
rose of bliss 
In the chill rigor of a discipline 
That turned her fond lips from her 
children's kiss. 
And made her joy of motherhood a 
sin. 

To their sad level by compassion led, 
One with the low and vile herself 
she made, 



While thankless misery mocked the 
hand that fed, 
And laughed to scorn her piteous 
masquerade. 20 

But still, with patience that out- 
wearied hate, 
She gave her all while yet she had 
to give; 
And then her empty hands, impor- 
tunate, 
In prayer she lifted that the poor 
might live. 

Sore pressed by grief, and WTongs 
more hard to bear, 
And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh 
control. 
She kept life fragrant with good deeds 
and prayer, 
And fresh and pure the white flower 
of her soul. 

Death found her busy at her task: one 
word 
Alone she uttered as she paused to 
die, 30 

"Silence!" — then listened even as 
one who heard 
With song and wing the angels 
drawing nigh ! 

Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands. 
And, on Murillo's canvas, Want and 
Pain 
Kneel at her feet. Her marble image 
stands 
Worshipped and crowned in Mar- 
burg's holy fane. 

Yea, wheresoe'er her Church its cross 
uprears, 
Wide as the world her storj'- still is 
told; 
In manhood's reverence, woman's 
prayers and tears, 
She lives again whose grave is cen- 
turies old. 40 

And still, despite the weakness or the 
blame 
Of blind submission to the blind, 
she hath 
A tender place in hearts of every name, 
And more than Rome owns Saint 
Elizabeth 1 



i66 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



A. D. 17S0 

Slow ages passed: and lo ! another 
caino, 
An Kntjlisli matron, in whose simple 
faith 
Nor priestly rule nor ritual had 
claim, 
A plain, uncanonized Elizabeth. 

No sackcloth robe, nor ashen-sprin- 
klcd hair, 
Nor waiting fast, nor scourge, nor 
vigil long, so 

Marred her calm presence. God had 
made her fair. 
And she could do His goodly work 
no wrong. 

Their yoke is easy and their burden 
"light 
Whose sole confessor is the Christ of 
God; 
Her cjuiet trust and faith transcend- 
ing sight 
Smoothed to her feet the difficult 
paths she trod. 

And there she walked, as duty bade 
her go, 
Safe and unsullied as a cloistered 
nun, 
Shamed with her plainness Fashion's 
gaudy show. 
And overcame the world she did 
not shun. 60 

In Earlham's bowers, in Plashet's lib- 
eral hall. 
In the great city's restless crowd 
and din. 
Her ear was open to the Master's call. 
And knew the summons of His 
voice within. 

Tender as mother, beautiful as wife. 
Amidst the throngs of prisoned 
crime slie stood 
In modest raiment faultless as her life. 
The type of England's w^orthiest 
womanhood ! 

To melt the liearts that harshness 
turned to stone 
The sweet persuasion of her lips 
sufficed, 70 



And guilt, which only hate and fear 
had known. 
Saw in her own the pitying love of 
Christ. 

So wheresoe'er the guiding Spirit went 
Slie followed, finding every prison 
cell 
It opened for her sacred as a tent 
Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob's 
well. 

And Pride and Fashion felt her strong 
appeal, 
And priest and ruler marvelled as 
they saw 
How hand in hand went wisdom 
with her zeal. 
And woman's pity kept the bounds 
of law. 80 

She rests in God's peace; but her 
memory stirs 
The air of earth as with an angel's 
wings, 
And warms and moves the hearts of 
men like hers. 
The sainted daughter of Hungarian 
kings. 

United now, the Briton and the Hun, 
Each, in her own time, faithful unto 
death. 
Live sister souls ! in name and spirit 
one, 
Thuringia's saint and our Eliza- 
beth! 



REQUITAL 

As Islam's Prophet, when his last day 
drew 
Nigh to its close, besought all men 

to say 
Whom he had wTonged, to whom he 
then should pay 
A debt forgotten, or for pardon sue. 
And, through the silence of his weep- 
ing friends, 
A strange voice cried: " Thou owest 

me a debt," 
"Allah be praised!" he answered. 
" Even yet 
He gives me power to make to thee 
amends. 



THE HOMESTEAD 



167 



O friend ! I thank thee for thy timely- 
word." 
So runs the tale. Its lesson all may 

heed, 
For all have sinned in thought, or 
word, or deed. 

Or, like the Prophet, through neglect 
have erred. 

All need forgiveness, all have debts to 
pay 

Ere the night cometh, while it still is 
day. 



THE HOMESTEAD 

Against the wooded hills it stands. 
Ghost of a dead home, staring 
through 

Its broken lights on wasted lands 
Where old-time harvests grew. 

Unploughed, unsown, by scythe un- 
shorn, 

The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie, 
Once rich and rife with golden corn 

And pale green breadths of rye. 

Of healthful herb and flower bereft, 
The garden plot no housewife 
keeps; 10 

Through weeds and tangle only left, 
The snake, its tenant, creeps. 

A lilac spray, still blossom-clad, 
Sways slow before the empty rooms; 

Beside the roofless porch a sad 
Pathetic red rose blooms. 

His track, in mould and dust of drouth, 
On floor and hearth the squirrel 
leaves, 

And in the fireless chimney's mouth 
His web the spider weaves. 20 

The leaning barn, about to fall, 
Resounds no more on husking eves; 

No cattle low in yard or stall. 
No thresher beats his sheaves. 

So sad, so drear ! It seems almost 
Some haunting Presence makes its 
sign; 
That down yon shadowy lane some 
ghost 
Might drive his spectral kine 1 



O home so desolate and lorn ! 

Did all thy memories die with thee ? 
Were any wed, were any born, 31 

Beneath this low roof-tree ? 

Whose axe the wall of forest broke, 
And let the waiting sunshine 
through ? 

What goodwife sent the earliest smoke 
Up the great chimney flue ? 

Did rustic lovers hither come ? 

Did maidens, swaying back and 
forth 
In rhythmic grace, at wheel and loom, 

Make light their toil with mirth ? 40 

Did child feet patter on the stair ? 

Did boyhood frolic in the snow ? 
Did gray age, in her elbow chair, 

Knit, rocking to and fro ? 

The murmuring brook, the sighing 
breeze. 
The pine's slow whisper, cannot tell; 
Low mounds beneath the hemlock- 
trees 
Keep the home secrets well. 

Cease, mother-land, to fondly boast 
Of sons far off who strive and 
thrive, so 

Forgetful that each swarming host 
Must leave an emptier hive ! 

O wanderers from ancestral soil, 
Leave noisome mill and chaffering 
store : 

Gird up your loins for sturdier toil, 
And build the home once more ! 

Come back to bayberry-scented slopes, 

And fragrant fern, and ground-nut 

vine; 

Breathe airs blown over holt and 

copse 

Sweet with black birch and pine. 60 

What matter if the gains are small 
That life's essential wants supply? 

Your homestead's title gives you all 
That idle wealth can buy. 

All that the many-dollared crave. 
The brick-walled slaves of 'Change 
and mart. 



1 68 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



Lawns, trees, fresh air, and flowers, 
you have, 
More dear for lack of art. 

Yourown sole masters, freedom-willed, 
\\'itli none to l)id you go or stay, 70 

Till the old fields your fathers tilled, 
As manly men as they ! 

With skill that spares your toiling 
hands, 

And cheniic aid that science brings, 
Reclaim the waste and outworn lands, 

And reign thereon as kings ! 

HOW THE ROBIN CAME 

AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND 

Happy young friends, sit by me. 
Under May's blown apple-tree. 
While these home-birds in and out 
Through the blossoms flit about. 
Hear a story, strange and old. 
By the wild red Indians told. 
How the ro])in came to be: 
Once a great chief left his son, — 
Well-beloved, his only one, — 
When the boy was well-nigh grown, 10 
In the trial-lodge alone. 
Left for tortures long and slow 
Youths like him must undergo, 
Who their pride of manhood test. 
Lacking water, food, and rest. 

Seven days the fast he kept, 
Seven niglits lie never slept. 
Then the young boy, -wTung with pain. 
Weak from nature's overstrain. 
Faltering, moaned a low complaint: 20 
" Spare me, father, for I faint ! " 
But the chieftain, haughty-eyed. 
Hid his pity in liis pride. 
"You sliall be a liunter good, 
Knowing never lack of food: 
You sliall Ije a warrior great. 
Wise as fox and strong as bear; 
Many scalps your belt shall wear. 
If with patient heart you wait 
Bravoly till your task is done. 30 

Better you should starving die 
Than that boy and squaw should cry 
Shame upon your father's son!" 

When next morn the sun's first rays 
Glistened on the hemlock sprays, ' 



Straight that lodge the old chief 

sought, 
And boiled samp and moose meat 

brought. 
" Rise and eat, my son ! " he said. 
Lo, he found the poor boy dead ! 
As with grief his grave they made, 40 
And his bow beside him laid. 
Pipe, and knife, and w^ampum-braid. 
On the lodge-top overhead. 
Preening smooth its breast of red 
And the brown coat that it wore, 
Sat a bird, unknow^n before. 
And as if with human tongue, 
"Mourn me not," it said, or sung; 
" I, a bird, am still your son, 
Happier than if hunter fleet, so 

Or a brave, before your feet 
Laying scalps in battle won. 
Friend of man, my song shall cheer 
Lodge and corn-land; hovering near, 
To each wigwam I shall bring 
Tidings of the coming spring; 
Every child my voice shall know 
In the moon of melting snow, 
When the maple's red bud swells. 
And the wind-flower lifts its bells. 60 
As their fond companion 
Men shall henceforth ow^n your son. 
And my song shall testify 
That of human kin am I." 

Thus the Indian legend saith 
How, at first, the robin came 
With a sweeter life than death, 
Bird for boy, and still the same. 
If my young friends doubt that this 
Is the robin's genesis, 70 

Not in vain is still the myth 
If a truth be found therewith : 
Unto gentleness belong 
Gifts unknown to pride and wrong; 
Happier far than hate is praise, — 
He who sings than he who slays. 

BANISHED FROM MASSACHU- 
SETTS 

1660 

ON A PAINTING BY E. A. ABBEY 

Over the threshold of his pleasant home 
Set in green clearings passed the 

exiled Friend, 
In simple trust, misdoubting not 

the end. 



THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN 



169 



" Dear heart of mine !" he said, " the 
time has come 

To trust the Lord for shelter." One 
long gaze 
The goodwife turned on each fa- 
miliar thing, — - 
The lowing kine, the orchard blos- 
soming. 

The open door that showed the hearth- 
fire's blaze, — 

And calmly answered, "Yes, He will 

provide." 

Silent and slow they crossed the 

homestead's bound, 10 

Lingering the longest by their 

child's grave-mound. 

"Move on, or stay and hang!" the 
sheriff cried. 

They left behind them more than 
home or land. 

And set sad faces to an alien strand. 

Safer with winds and waves than hu- 
man wrath. 
With ravening wolves than those 

whose zeal for God 
Was cruelty to man, the exiles trod 
Drear leagues of forest without guide 

or path. 
Or launching frail boats on the un- 
charted sea. 
Round storm-vexed capes, whose 
teeth of granite ground 20 

The waves to foam, their perilous 
way they wound. 
Enduring all things so their souls were 

free. 
Oh, true confessors, shaming them 
who did 
Anew the wrong their Pilgrim Fa- 
thers bore ! 
For you the Mayflower spread her 
sail once more. 
Freighted with souls , to all that duty bid 
Faithful as they who sought an un- 
known land. 
O'er wintry seas, from Holland's 
Hook of Sand ! 

So from his lost home to the darkening 
main. 
Bodeful of storm, stout Macy held 
his way, 30 

And, when the green shore blended 
with the gray, 
His poor wife moaned: "Let us turn 
back again." 



"Nay, woman, weak of faith, kneel 

down," said he, 
"And say thy prayers: the Lord 

himself will steer; 
And led by Him, nor man nor devils 

I fear ! " 
So the gray Southwicks, from a rainy 

sea, 
Saw, far and faint, the loom of land, 

and gave 
With feeble voices thanks for 

friendly ground 
Whereon to rest their weary feet, 

and found 
A peaceful death-bed and a quiet 

grave 40 

Where, ocean-walled, and wiser than 

his age. 
The lord of Shelter scorned the bigot's 

rage. 

Aquidneck's isle, Nantucket's lonely 
shores. 
And Indian-haunted Narragansett 

saw 
The way-worn travellers round 
their camp-fire draw. 
Or heard the plashing of their weary 

oars. 
And every place whereon they rested 
grew 
Happier for pure and gracious wo- 
manhood. 
And men whose names for stainless 
honor stood. 
Founders of States and rulers wise and 
true. so 

The Muse of history yet shall make 
amends 
To those who freedom, peace, and 

justice taught. 
Beyond their dark age led the van 
of thought, 
And left unforfeited the name of 

Friends. 
O mother State, how foiled was thy de- 
sign ! 
The gain was theirs, the loss alone 
was thine. 



THE BROWN DWARF OF 
RUGEN 

The pleasant isle of Riigen looks the 
Baltic water o'er, 



lyo 



NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY POEMS 



To the silver-sanded beaches of the 
Pomeranian shore; 

And in the town of Kambin a httle 

l)oy and maid 
Phicked the meadow-flowers together 

and in the sea-surf played. 

Alike were they in beauty if not in 

their degree; 
He was tiie Amptman's first-born, the 

miller's child w'as she. 

Now of old the isle of Riigen was full 

of Dwarfs and Trolls, 
The brown-faced little Earth-men, the 

people without souls; 

And for every man and woman in 

Riigen's island found 
Walking in air and sunshine, a Troll 

was underground. lo 

It chanced the little maiden, one 
morning, strolled away 

Among the haunted Nine Hills, where 
the elves and goblins play. 

That day, in barley fields below, the 
harvesters had know'n 

Of evil voices in the air, and heard the 
small horns blown. 

She came not back ; the search for her 
in field and wood was vain: 

They cried her east, they cried her 
west, but she came not 
again. 

"She's down among the Brown 

Dwarfs," said the dream-wives 

wi.se and old, 
And prayers were made, and masses 

said, and Rambin's church bell 

tolled. 

Five years her father mourned her; 

and then John Deitrich said: 
" I will find my little playmate, be she 

alive or dead." 20 

He watched among the Nine Hills, he 
heard the Jirown Dwarfs 
sing. 

And saw them dance by moonlight 
merrily in a ring. 



And when their gay-robed leader 
tossed up his cap of red. 

Young Deitrich caught it as it fell, and 
thrust it on his head. 

The Troll came crouching at his feet 
and w'ept for lack of it. 

" Oh, give me back my magic cap, for 
your great head unfit !" 

" Nay," Deitrich said, " the Dwarf who 
throws his charmed cap away. 

Must serve its finder at his will, and 
for his folly pay. 

"You stole my pretty Lisbeth, and 

hid her in the earth; 
And you shall ope the door of glass 

and let me lead her forth." 30 

"She will not come; she's one of us; 
she 's mine ! " the Brown Dwarf 
said; 

" The day is set, the cake is baked, to- 
morrow we shall wed." 

"The fell fiend fetch thee!" Deitrich 
cried, "and keep thy foul 
tongue still. 

Quick ! open, to thy evil world, the 
glass door of the hill !" 

The Dwarf obeyed; and youth and 
Troll down the long stairway 
passed. 

And saw in dim and sunless light a 
country strange and vast. 

Weird, rich, and wonderful, he saw 
the elfin under-land, — 

Its palaces of precious stones, its 
streets of golden sand. 

He came unto a banquet-hall with 

tables richly spread. 
Where a young maiden served to him 

the red wine and the bread. 40 

How fair she seemed among the Trolls 

so ugly and so wild ! 
Yet pale and very sorrowful, like one 

who never smiled ! 

Her low, sweet voice, her gold-brown 
hair, her tender blue eyes 
seemed 



THE BROWN DWARF OF RUGEN 



171 



Like something he had seen elsewhere 
or something he had dreamed. 

He looked; he clasped her in his arms; 

he knew the long-lost one; 
" O Lisbeth ! See thy playmate — I 

am the Amptman's son ! " 

She leaned her fair head on his breast, 
and through her sobs she 
spoke: 

" Oh, take me from this evil place, and 
from the elfin folk ! 

"And let me tread the grass-green 
fields and smell the flowers 
again, 

And feel the soft wind on my cheek 
and hear the dropping rain ! 50 

" And oh, to hear the singing bird, the 

rustling of the tree, 
The lowing cows, the bleat of sheep, 

the voices of the sea; 

" And oh, upon my father's knee to sit 

beside the door, 
And hear the bell of vespers ring in 
Rambin church once more!" 

He kissed her cheek, he kissed her lips; 

the Brown Dwarf groaned to 

see. 
And tore his tangled hair and ground 

his long teeth angrily. 

But Deitrich said: "For five long 
years this tender Christian 
maid 

Has served you in your evil world, and 
well must she be paid ! 

" Haste ! — hither bring me precious 
gems, the richest in your 
store; 

Then when we pass the gate of glass, 
you'll take your cap once 
more." 6° 

No choice was left the baffled Troll, 
and, murmuring, he obeyed, 

And filled the pockets of the youth 
and apron of the maid. 



They left the dreadful under-land and 
passed the gate of glass; 

They felt the sunshine's warm caress, 
they trod the soft, green grass. 

And when, beneath, they saw the 
Dwarf stretch up to them his 
brown 

And crooked claw-like fingers, they 
tossed his red cap down. 

Oh, never shone so bright a sun, was 

never sky so blue. 
As hand in hand they homeward 

walked the pleasant meadows 

through ! 

And never sang the birds so sweet in 
Rambin's woods before, 

And never washed the waves so soft 
along the Baltic shore; 70 

And when beneath his door-yard trees 
the father met his child. 

The bells rung out their merriest peal, 
the folks with joy ran wild. 

And soon from Rambin's holy church 
the twain came forth as one. 

The Amptman kissed a daughter, the 
miller blest a son. 

John Deitrich's fame went far and 
wide, and nurse and maid 
crooned o'er 

Their cradle song : ' ' Sleep on , sleep well, 
the Trolls shall come no more ! " 

For in the haunted Nine Hills he set a 

cross of stone; 
And Elf and Brown Dwarf sought in 

vain a door where door was 

none. 

The tower he built in Rambin, fair 
Riigen's pride and boast. 

Looked o'er the Baltic water to the 
Pomeranian coast; 80 

And, for his worth ennobled, and rich 

beyond compare. 
Count Deitrich and his lovely bride 

dwelt long and happy there. 









MAM ' 







" He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes ! " 



POEMS OF NATURE 



THE FROST SPIRIT 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost 

Spirit comes! You may trace 

his footsteps now 
On the naked woods and tlie blasted 

fiohls and the brown hill's 

witlicred brow. 
He has smitten the leaves of the gray 



old trees where their pleasant 
green came forth. 
And the winds, which follow wherever 
he goes, have shaken them 
down to earth. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost 
Spirit comes ! from the frozen 
Labrador, 



THE MERRIMAC 



^73 



From the icy bridge of the Northern 
seas, which the white bear 
wanders o'er, 

Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with 
ice, and the luckless forms be- 
low 

In the sunless cold of the lingering 
night into marble statues grow ! 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost 
Spirit comes! on the rushing 
Northern blast. 

And the dark Norwegian pines have 
bowed as his fearful breath 
went past. 

With an unscorched wing he has hur- 
ried on, where the fires of Hecla 
glow 

On the darkly beautiful sky above and 
the ancient ice below. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost 

Spirit comes ! and the quiet lake 

shall feel 
The torpid touch of his glazing breath, 

and ring to the skater's heel; 
And the streams which danced on the 

broken rocks, or sang to the 

leaning grass. 
Shall bow again to their winter chain, 

and in mournful silence pass. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost 
Spirit comes ! Let us meet him 
as we may, 

And turn with the light of the parlor- 
fire his evil power away; 

And gather closer the circle round, 
when that firelight dances high. 

And laugh at the shriek of the baffled 
Fiend as his sounding wing goes 
by! 

THE MERRIMAC 

" The Indians speak of a beautiful river, 
far to the south, which the}-- call Merri- 
mac." — SiEUR DE MoNTS, 1604. 

Stream of my fathers ! sweetly still 
The sunset rays thy valley fill; 
Poured slantwise down the long defile, 
Wave, wood, and spire beneath them 

smile. 
I see the winding Powow fold 
The green hill in its belt of gold, 



And following down its wavy line, 
Its sparkling waters blend with thine. 
There's not a tree upon thy side, 
Nor rock, which thy returning tide lo 
As yet hath left abrupt and stark 
Above thy evening water-mark; 
No calm cove with its rocky hem. 
No isle whose emerald swells begem 
Thy broad, smooth current; not a 

sail 
Bowed to the freshening ocean gale; 
No small boat with its busy oars. 
Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores; 
Nor farm-house with its maple shade, 
Or rigid poplar colonnade, 20 

But lies distinct and full in sight. 
Beneath this gush of sunset light. 
Centuries ago, that harbor-bar. 
Stretching its length of foam afar, 
And Salisbury's beach of shining sand. 
And yonder island's wave-smoothed 

strand. 
Saw the adventurer's tiny sail, 
Flit, stooping from the eastern gale; 
And o'er these woods and waters broke 
The cheer from Britain's hearts of 
oak, 30 

As brightly on the voyager's eye. 
Weary of forest, sea, and sky, 
Breaking the dull continuous wood. 
The Merrimac rolled down his flood; 
Mingling that clear pellucid brook. 
Which channels vast Agioochook 
When spring-time's sun and shower 

unlock 
The frozen fountains of the rock. 
And more abundant waters given 
From that pure lake, "The Smile of 
Heaven," 40 

Tributes from vale and mountain- 
side, — 
With ocean's dark, eternal tide! 

On yonder Tocky cape, which braves 
The stormy challenge of the waves, 
Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood. 
The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood, 
Planting upon the topmost crag 
The staff of England's battle-flag; 
And, while from out its heavy fold 
Saint George's crimson cross un- 
rolled, 50 
Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare. 
And weapons brandishing in air. 
He gave to that lone promontory 
The sweetest name in all his story; 



174 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Of her, the flower of Ishim's daughters, 
Whose harems look on Stamboul's 

waters, — 
Who, when the chance of war had 

hound 
The Moslem chain his limbs around, 
Wrcat lied o'er with silk that iron chain, 
Soothed with her smiles his hours of 

pain, ^° 

And fondly to her youthful slave 
A dearer gift than freedom gave. 

Hut look ! the yellow light no more 
Streams down on wave and verdant 

shore; 
And clearlv on the calm air swells 
The twilight voice of distant bells. 
From Ocean's bosom, white and thin, 
The mists come slow^ly rolling in; 
Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim, 
Amidst the sea-like vapor sw'im, 70 
While yonder lonely coast-light, set 
Within its wave-washed minaret, 
Half quenched, a beamless star and 

pale, 
Shines dimly through its cloudy veil ! 

Home of my fathers ! — I have stood 
Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood: 
Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade 
Along his frowning Palisade; 
Looked down the Appalachian peak 
On Juniata's silver streak; 80 

Have seen along his valley gleam 
The Mohawk's softly winding stream; 
The level light of sunset shine 
Through broad Potomac's hem of 

pine; 
And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner 
Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna; 
Yet wheresoe'er his step might be, 
Thy wandering child looked back to 

thee! 
Heard in his dreams thy river's sound 
( )f nnirmuring on its pei)bly bound, 90 
The unforgotten swell and roar 
Of waves on thy familiar shore; 
And saw, amidst the curtained gloom 
And quiet of his lonely room, 
Tiiy simset scenes before him pass; 
As, in Agrippa's magic glass, 
The loved and lost arose to view, 
Remembered groves in greenness 

grew, 
Bathed still in childhood's morning 

dew, 99 



Along whose bowers of beauty swept 
Whatever Memory's mourners wept. 
Sweet faces, which the charnel kept, 
Young, gentle eyes, which long had 

slept; 
And while the gazer leaned to 

trace, 
More near, some dear familiar face, 
He w^ept to find the vision flown, — 
A phantom and a dream alone ! 



HAMPTON BEACH 

The sunlight glitters keen and 
bright, 
Where, miles aw^ay. 
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight 
A luminous belt, a misty light, 
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and 
wastes of sandy gray. 

The tremulous shadow of the Sea ! 

Against its ground 
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and 

tree. 
Still as a picture, clear and free, 
With varying outline mark the coast 
for miles around. 10 

On — on — we tread with loose- 
flung rein 
Our seaw^ard way, 
Through dark-green fields and blos- 
soming grain, 
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the 
lane, 
And bends above our heads the flow- 
ering locust spray. 

Ha ! like a kind hand on my brow 

Comes this fresh breeze. 
Cooling its dull and feverish glow, 
While through my being seems to 
flow 
The breath of a new life, the healing 
of the seas ! 20 

Now rest w^e, where this grassy 
mound 
His feet hath set 
In the great waters, which have 

bound 
His granite ankles greenly round 
With long and tangled moss, and 
weeds with cool spray wet. 



HAMPTON BEACH 



175 




" Wave after wave 
Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray, 
Shoulder the broken tide away " 



Good-by to Pain and Care ! I take 

Mine ease to-day : 
Here where these sunny waters 

break, 
And ripples this keen breeze, I 
shake 
All burdens from the heart, all weary 
thoughts away. 30 

I draw a freer breath, I seem 

Like all I see — 
Waves in the sun, the white-winged 

gleam 
Of sea-birds in the slanting beam. 
And far-off sails which flit before the 
south-wind free. 

So when Time's veil shall fall asun- 
der, 
The soul may know 
No fearful change, nor sudden won- 
der. 
Nor sink the weight of mystery 
under, 
But with the upward rise, and with 
the vastness grow. 40 



And all we shrink from now may 
seem 
No new revealing; 
Familiar as our childhood's stream, 
Or pleasant memory of a dream, 
The loved and cherished Past upon 
the new life stealing. 

Serene and mild the untried light 

May have its dawning; 
And, as in summer's northern 

night 
The evening and the dawn unite, 
The sunset hues of Time blend with 
the soul's new morning. 50 

I sit alone; in foam and spray 

Wave after wave 
Breaks on the rocks which, stern 

and gray. 
Shoulder the broken tide away, 
Or murmurs hoarse and strong through 
mossy cleft and cave. 

What heed I of the dusty land 
And noisy town ? 



176 



POEMS OF NATURE 



I sec tlie miplity deop expand 
From its white line of glimmering 

sand 
To where the blue of heaven on bluer 

waves shuts down ! 60 

In listless fjuietude of mind, 

I yield to all 
The change of cloud and wave and 

wind; 
And passive on the flood reclined, 
I wander with the waves, and with 
them lise and fall. 

But look, thou dreamer ! wave and 
shore 
In shadow lie; 
The night-wind warns me back once 

more 
To where, my native hill-tops o'er, 
Bends like an arch of fire the glowing 
sunset sky. 70 

So then, beach, bluff, and wave, 
farewell ! 
I bear with me 
No token stone nor glittering shell, 
But long and oft shall Memory tell 
Of this brief thoughtful hour of mus- 
ing by the Sea. 



A DREAM OF SUMMER 

Bland as the morning breath of June 

The southwest breezes play; 
And, through its liaze, tlie winter noon 

vSeems warm as summer's da3^ 
The snow-plumed Angel of the North 

Has dropped his icy spear; 
Again the mossy earth looks forth 

Again the streams gush clear. 

The fox his hillside cell forsakes. 

The muskrat leaves his nook, 
The bluebird in the meadow brakes 

Is singing with the brook. 
" Bear up, ( ) Mother Nature ! " cry 

Bird, breeze, and streamlet free; 
"Our winter voices prophesy 

Of summer days to thee!'' 

So, in those winters of the soul, 
By l)itter bja.sts and drear 

O'erswopt from Memory's frozen pole, 
Will sunny days appear. 



Reviving Hope and Faith, they show 
The soul its living powers, 

And how beneath the winter's snow 
Lie germs of summer flowers ! 

The Night is mother of the Day, 

The Winter of the Spring, 
And ever upon old Decay 

The greenest mosses cling. 
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks. 

Through showers the sunbeams fall; 
For God, who loveth all His works. 

Has left His hope with all 1 



THE LAKESIDE 

The shadows round the inland sea 

Are deepening into night; 
Slow up the slopes of Ossipee 

They chase the lessening light. 
Tired of the long day's blinding heat, 

I rest my languid eye, 
Lake of the Hills ! where, cool and 
sweet, 

Thy sunset waters lie ! 

Along the sky, in wavy lines, 

O'er isle and reach and bay, 10 

Green-belted with eternal pines. 

The mountains stretch away. 
Below, the maple masses sleep 

Where shore with water blends, 
While midway on the tranquil deep 

The evening light descends. 

So seemed it when yon hill's red 
cro\ATi, 

Of old, the Indian trod, 
And, through the sunset air, looked 
down 

Upon the Smile of God. 20 

To him of light and shade the laws 

No forest skeptic taught; 
Their living and eternal Cause 

His truer instinct sought. 

He saw these mountains in the light 

Which now across them shines; 
This lake, in summer sunset bright. 

Walled round with sombering pines. 
God near him seemed; from earth and 
skies 

His loving voice he heard, 30 

As, face to face, in Paradise, 

Man stood before the Lord. 



AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR 177 



Thanks, O our Father! that, like 
him, 

Thy tender love I see, 
In radiant hill and woodland dim, 

And tinted sunset sea. 
For not in mockery dost Thou fill 

Our earth with light and grace; 
Thou hid'st no dark and cruel 
will 

Behind Thy smiling face ! 40 



But thou, from whom the Spring hath 
gone, 

For whom the flowers no longer blow, 
Who standest blighted and forlorn, 

Like Autumn waiting for the snow; 

No hope is thine of sunnier hours, 
Thy Winter shall no more depart; 

No Spring revive thy wasted flowers. 
Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart. 




Lake Superior 



AUTUMN THOUGHTS 

Gone hath the Spring, with all its 
flowers, 
And gone the Summer's pomp and 
show, 
And Autumn, in his leafless bowers. 
Is waiting for the Winter's snow. 

I said to Earth, so cold and gray, 
"An emblem of myself thou art." 

" Not so," the Earth did seem to say, 
" For Spring shall warm my frozen 
heart." 

I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams 
Of warmer sun and softer rain. 

And wait to hear the sound of streams 
And songs of merry birds again. 



ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S 
QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR 

All day the darkness and the cold 

Upon my heart have lain, 
Like shadows on the winter sky, 

Like frost upon the pane; 

But now my torpid fancy wakes, 
And, on thy Eagle's plume, 

Rides forth, like Sindbad on his 
bird. 
Or witch upon her broom I 

Below me roar the rocking pines, 
Before me spreads the lake 10 

Whose long and solemn-sounding 
waves 
Against the sunset break. 



178 



POEMS OF NATURE 



I hear the wild Kice-Eater thresh 
The grain he has not sown; 

I see, witli fliisliing scythe of fire, 
The prairie harvest mown ! 

I hear the far-off voyager's horn; 

I see tlie Yankee's trail, — 
His foot on every mountain-pass, 

On every stream his sail. 20 

By forest, lake, and waterfall, 

"I see his pedler show; 
The mighty mingling with the mean, 

The lofty with the low. 

He 's whittling by St. Mary's Falls, 

Upon his loaded wain; 
He's measuring o'er the Pictured 
Rocks, 

With eager eyes of gain. 

I hear tlie mattock in the mine, 
The axe-stroke in the dell, 30 

The clamor from the Indian lodge. 
The Jesuit chapel bell ! 

I see the swarthy trappers come 
From Mississippi's springs; 

And war-chiefs with their painted 
brows. 
And crests of eagle wings. 

Behind the scared squaw's birch 
canoe. 

The steamer smokes and raves; 
And city lots are staked for sale 

Above old Indian graves. 40 

I hear tlie tread of pioneers 

Of nations yet to be; 
The first low wash of waves, w'heresoon 

Shall roll a human sea. 

The rudiments of empire here 
Are plastic yet and w-arm; 

The chaos of a mighty world 
Is rounding into form ! 

Each rude and jostling fragment soon 
Its fitting place shall find, — so 

The raw material of a State, 
Its muscle and its mind ! 

And, westering still, the star which 
leads 
The New World in its train 



Has tipped with fire the icy spears 
Of many a mountain chain. 

The snowy cones of Oregon 
Are kindling on its way; 

And California's golden sands 
Gleam brighter in its ray ! 



60 



Then blessings on thy eagle quill, 

As, w'andering far and wide, 
I thank thee for this twilight dream 
And Fancy's airy ride ! 

Yet, w^elcomer than regal plumes. 
Which Western trappers find, 

Thy free and pleasant thoughts, 
chance sown, 
Like feathers on the wind. 

Thy symbol be the mountain-bird, 
Whose glistening quill I hold; 70 

Thy home the ample air of hope, 
And memory's sunset gold ! 

In thee, let joy with duty join, 
And strength unite with love. 

The eagle's pinions folding round 
The warm heart of the dove ! 

So, when in darkness sleeps the vale 
Where still the blind bird clings. 

The sunshine of the upper sky 

Shall glitter on thy wings ! 80 



APRIL 

" The spring comes slowly up (his wav." 

Christahel. 

'T IS the noon of the spring-time, yet 

never a bird 
In the wind-shaken elm or the maple 

is heard; 
For green meadow-grasses wide levels 

of snow, 
And blowing of drifts where the crocus 

should blow; 
Where wund-fiower and violet, amber 

and white. 
On south-sloping brooksides should 

smile in the light, 
O'er the cold wanter-beds of their late- 
waking roots 
The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal 

shoots; 



PICTURES 



179 



And, longing for light, under wind- 
driven heaps, 
Round the boles of the pine-wood the 

ground-laurel creeps, 
Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized 

of showers. 
With buds scarcely swelled, which 

should burst into flowers ! 
We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of 

the south ! 
For the touch of thy light wings, the 

kiss of thy mouth; 
For the yearly evangel thou bearest 

from God, 
Resurrection and life to the graves of 

the sod ! 
Up our long river-valley, for days, 

have not ceased 
The wail and the shriek of the bitter 

northeast, 
Raw and chill, as if winnowed through 

ices and snow, 
All the way from the land of the wild 

Esquimau, 
Until all our dreams of the land of the 

blest. 
Like that red hunter's, turn to the 

sunny southwest. 
O soul of the spring-time, its light and 

its breath. 
Bring warmth to this coldness, bring 

life to this death; 
Renew the great miracle; let us behold 
The stone from the mouth of the 

sepulchre rolled, 
And Nature, like Lazarus,rise, as of old! 
Let our faith, which in darkness and 

coldness has lain. 
Revive with the warmth and the 

brightness again, 
And in blooming of flower and bud- 
ding of tree 
The symbols and types of our destiny 

see; 
The life of the spring-time, the life of 

the whole. 
And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love 

to the soul ! 



PICTURES 



Light, warmth, and sprouting green- 
ness, and o'er all 



Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, 

raining down 
Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed 

town. 
The freshening meadows, and the 
hillsides brown; 
Voice of the west-wind from the 
hills of pine. 
And the brimmed river from its dis- 
tant fall. 
Low hum of bees, and joyous inter- 
lude 
Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirt- 
ing wood, — 
Heralds and prophecies of sound 

and sight, 
Blessed forerunners of the warmth 
and light, 10 

Attendant angels to the house of 
prayer, 
With reverent footsteps keeping 
pace with mine, — 
Once more, through God's grent love, 

with you I share 
A morn of resurrection sweet and fair 
As that which saw, of old, in Pal- 
estine, 
Immortal Love uprising in fresh 

bloom 
From the dark night and winter of 
the tomb ! 



II 



White with its sun-bleached dust, the 

pathway winds 
Before me; dust is on the shrunken 

grass, 
And on the trees beneath whose 

boughs I pass; 20 

Frail screen against tlie Hunter of 

the sky. 
Who, glaring on me with his lidless 

eye, 
While mounting with his dog-star 
high and higher 
Ambushed in light intolerable, un- 
binds 
The burnished quiver of his shafts 
of fire. 
Between me and the hot fields of his 

South 
A tremulous glow, as from a fur- 
nace-mouth. 
Glimmers and swims before my daz- 
zled sight. 



i8o 



POEMS OF NATURE 



As if the burning arrows of his 

ire 

Broke as they fell, and shattered 

into light; 30 

Yet on my cheek I feel the western 

wind, 

And hear it telling to the orchard 

trees. 
And to the faint and flower-for- 
saken bees, 
Tales of fair meadows, green with 
constant streams. 
And mountains rising blue and cool 
behind. 
Where in moist dells the purple 
orchis gleams. 
And starred with white the virgin's 

bower is twined. 
So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he 
fares 
Along life's summer waste, at times 
is fanned. 
Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet 
airs 40 

Of a serener and a holier land, 
Fresh as the morn, and as the dew- 
fall bland. 
Breath of the blessed Heaven for whicli 

we pray. 
Blow from the eternal hills ! make glad 
our earthly way ! 



SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE 

LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE 
I. NOON 

White clouds, whose shadows haunt 

the deep, 
Light mists, wliose soft embraces keep 
The sunshine on the hills asleep ! 

() isles of calm ! O dark, still wood ! 
And stiller skies that overbrood 
Your rest with deeper quietude ! 

O shapes and hues, dim beckoning, 

through 
Yon mountain gaps, my longing view 
Beyond the purple and the l)lue, 

To stillor soa and greener land, 10 

And softer lights and airs more bland. 
And skies, — the hollow of God's hand ! 



Transfused through you, O mountain 

friends ! 
With mine your solemn spirit blends, 
And life no more hath separate ends. 

I read each misty mountain sign, 
I know the voice of wave and pine, 
And I am yours, and ye are mine. 

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 
I lapse into the glad release 20 

Of Nature's own exceeding peace. 

O welcome calm of heart and mind ! 
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind 
To leave a tenderer growth behind, 

So fall the w-eary years away; 
A child again, my head I lay 
Upon the lap of this sweet day. 

This western wind hath Lethean powers, 
Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers. 
The lake is white with lotus-flowers ! 30 

Even Duty's voice is faint and low. 
And slumberous Conscience, waking 

slow, 
Forgets her blotted scroll to show. 

The Shadow which pursues us all, 
Whose ever-nearing steps appall, 
Wliose voice w^e hear behind us call, — 

That Shadow blends with mountain 

gray, 
It speaks but what the light waves 

say, — 
Death walks apart from Fear to-day ! 

Rocked on her breast, these pines 
and I 40 

Alike on Nature's love rely; 
And equal seems to hve or die. 

Assured that He whose presence fills 
With light the spaces of these hills 
No evil to His creatures wills. 

The simple faith remains, that He 
Will do, whatever that may be. 
The best alike for man and tree. 

What mosses over one shall grow, 
What light and life the other know, so 
Unanxious, leaving Him to show. 



SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE 



i8i 



II. EVENING 

Yon mountain's side is black with 
night, 
While, broad-orbed, o'er its gleam- 
ing crown 
The moon, slow-rounding into sight. 
On the hushed inland sea looks 
down. 



What time before the eastern light 70 
The pale ghost of the setting moon 

Shall hide behind yon rocky spines. 
And the young archer, Morn, shall 
break 
His arrows on the mountain pines. 
And, golden-sandalled, walk the 
lake ! 




" O isles of calm ! dark, still wood ! " 



How start to light the clustering isles, 
Each silver-hemmed ! How sharply 
show 

The shadows of their rocky piles, 
And tree-tops in the wave below ! 

How far and strange the mountains 

seem, 60 

Dim-looming through the pale, still 

light ! 

The vague, vast grouping of a dream. 

They stretch into the solemn night. 

Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale, 
Hushed by that presence grand and 
grave, 

Are silent, save the cricket's wail. 
And low response of leaf and wave. 

Fair scenes ! whereto the Day and 
Night 
Make rival love, I leave ye soon, 



Farewell ! around this smiling bay 
Gay-hearted Health, and Life in 
bloom. 
With lighter steps than mine, may 
stray 
In radiant summers yet to come. 

But none shall more regretful leave 80 
These waters and these hills than 
I: 

Or, distant, fonder dream how eve 
Or dawn is painting wave and sky; 



How 



moons shine sad and 



rismg 
mild 

On wooded isle and silvering bay; 
Or setting suns beyond the piled 
And purple mountains lead the day ; 

Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy. 
Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering 
here, 



l82 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Shall add, to life's abounding joy, 90 
The charmed repose to suffering dear, 

Still waits kind Nature to impart 
Her choicest gifts to such as gain 

An entrance to her loving heart 
Through the sharp discipline of 
pain. 

Forever from the Hand that takes 
One blessing from us others fall; 

And, soon or late, our Father makes 
His perfect recompense to all ! 

Oh, watched by Silence and the 
Night, 100 

And folded in the strong embrace 
Of the great mountains, with the light 

Of the sweet heavens upon thy face, 

Lake of the Northland ! keep thy dower 
Of beauty still, and while above 

Thy solemn mountains speak of power. 
Be thou the mirror of God's love. 



THE FRUIT-GIFT 

Last night, just as the tints of au- 
tumn's sky 
Of sunset faded from our hills and 

streams, 
I sat. vague listening, lapped in twi- 
light dreams. 

To the leaf's rustle, and the cricket's 
cry. 

Then, like that basket, flush with sum- 
mer fruit. 

Dropped by the angels at the Pro- 
phet's foot. 

Came, unannounced, a gift of clus- 
tered sweetness. 
Full-orbed, and glowing with the 
prisoned l)eams 

Of summery suns, and rounded to 
completeness 

By kisses of tlie south-wind and the 
dew. 

Thrilled witli a glad surprise, me- 
thought I knew 

The pleasure of the homeward-turning 
Jew, 

When Eshcol's clusters on his shoul- 
ders lay. 

Dropping their sweetness on his desert 
way. 



I said, " This fruit beseems no world of 
sin. 
Its parent vine, rooted in Paradise, 
O'ercrept the wall, and never paid 

the price 
Of the great mischief, — an ambro- 
sial tree, 
Eden's exotic, somehow smuggled in. 
To keep the thorns and thistles com- 
pany." 
Perchance our frail, sad mother 
plucked in haste 
A single vine-slip as she passed the 
gate. 
Where the dread sword alternate 
paled and burned. 
And the stern angel, pitying her 
fate. 
Forgave the lovely trespasser, and 

turned 
Aside his face of fire; and thus the 

waste 
And fallen world hath yet its annual 

taste 
Of primal good, to prove of sin the 

cost. 
And show by one gleaned ear the 
mighty harvest lost. 



FLOWERS IN WINTER 

PAINTED UPON A PORTE LIVRE 

How strange to greet, this frosty morn, 
In graceful counterfeit of flowers. 

These children of the meadows, born 
Of sunshine and of showers ! 

How well the conscious wood retains 
The pictures of its flower-sown 
home. 
The lights and shades, the purple 
stains. 
And golden hues of bloom ! 

It was a happy thought to bring 
To the dark season's frost and 
rime 10 

This painted memory of spring, 
This dream of summer-time. 

Our hearts are lighter for its sake. 
Our fancy's age renews its youth, 

And dim-remembered fictions take 
The guise of present truth. 



THE MAYFLOWERS 



'83 



A wizard of the Merrimac, — 
So old ancestral legends say, — 

Could call green leaf and blossom back 
To frosted stem and spray. 20 

The dry logs of the cottage wall, 
Beneath his touch, put out their 
leaves; 

The clay-:bound swallow, at his call, 
Played round the icy eaves. 

The settler saw his oaken flail 

Take bud, and bloom before his 
eyes; 

From frozen pools he saw the pale. 
Sweet summer lilies rise. 

To their old homes, by man profaned, 
Came the sad dryads, exiled long, 30 

And through their leafy tongues com- 
plained 
Of household use and wrong. 

The beechen platter sprouted wild. 
The pipkin wore its old-time green. 

The cradle o'er the sleeping child 
Became a leafy screen. 

Haply our gentle friend hath met, 
While wandering in her sylvan 
quest. 

Haunting his native woodlands yet. 
That Druid of the West; 40 

And, while the dew on leaf and flower 
Glistened in moonlight clear and 
still. 
Learned the dusk wizard's spell of 
power. 
And caught his trick of skill. 

But welcome, be it new or old. 

The gift which makes the day more 
bright. 

And paints, upon the ground of cold 
And darkness, warmth and light ! 

Without is neither gold nor green; 

Within, for birds, the birch-logs 
sing; 50 

Yet, summer-like, we sit between 

The autumn and the spring. 

The one, with bridal blush of rose, 
. And sweetest breath of woodland 
balm, 



And one whose matron lips unclose 
In smiles of saintly calm. 

Fill soft and deep, O winter snow ! 

The sweet azalea's oaken dells. 
And hide the bank where roses blow, 

And swing the azure bells ! 60 

O'erlay the amber violet's leaves. 
The purple aster's brookside home. 

Guard all the flowers her pencil gives 
A life beyond their bloom. 

And she, when spring comes round 
again. 

By greening slope and singing flood 
Shall wander, seeking, not in vain, 

Her darlings of the wood. 



THE MAYFLOWERS 

The trailing arbutus, or mayflower, grows 
abundantly in the vicinity of Plymouth, 
and was the first flower that greeted the 
Pilgrims after their fearful winter. 

Sad Mayflower! watched by winter 
stars. 

And nursed by winter gales, 
With petals of the sleeted spars, 

And leaves of frozen sails ! 

What had she in those dreary hours, 
Within her ice-rimmed bay. 

In common with the wild-wood 
flowers. 
The first sweet smiles of May ? 

Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim 
said, 
Who saw the blossoms peer 
Above the brown leaves, dry and 
dead, 
" Behold our Mayflower here! 

"God wills it: here our rest shall 
be, 

Our years of wandering o'er; 
For us the Mayflower of the sea 

Shall spread her sails no more." 

O sacred flowers of faith and hope, 

As sweetly now as then 
Ye bloom on many a birchen slope. 

In many a pine-dark glen. 



i84 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Hehind the sea-wall's rugped length. 

Unchanged, vour leaves unfold, 
Like love l)ehind the manly strength 

Of the brave hearts of old. 

So live the fathers in their sons, 
Tiieir sturdv faitii be ours, 

And ours the "love that overruns 
Its rocky strength with flowers. 

The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day 
Its siiadow round us draws; 

Tiie Mavflower of his stormy bay, 
Our Freedom's struggling cause. 

But warmer suns erelong shall bring 

To life the frozen sod; 
And through dead leaves of hope shall 
spring 

Afresh the flowers of God ! 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN 
I 

O'er the bare woods, whose out- 
stretched hands 
Plead with the leaden heavens in 
vain, 
I see, beyond the valley lands, 
The sea's long level dim with 
rain. 
Around me all things, stark and 

dumb, 
Seem praying for the snows to 
come, 
And, for the summer bloom and green- 
ness gone. 
With winter's sunset lights and daz- 
zling morn atone. 



II 



Along the river's summer walk, 
The withered tufts of asters 
nod; lo 

And trembles on its arid stalk 
The lioar plume of the golden- 
rod. 
And on a ground of sombre fir, 
And azure-.studded juniper, 
The silver birch its buds of purple 

shows, 
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed 
the sweet wild-rose 1 



III 



With mingled sound of horns and 
bells, 
A far-heard clang, the wild geese 

fly, 

Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and 

fells. 

Like a great arrow through the 

sky, 20 

Two dusky lines converged in 

one. 
Chasing the southward-flying sun; 
While the brave snow-bird and the 

hardy jay 
Call to them from the pines, as if to 
bid them stay. 



IV 



I passed this way a year ago : 
The wind blew south; the noon of 
day 
Was warm as June's; and save that 
snow 
Flecked the low mountains far 
away. 
And that the vernal-seeming breeze 
Mocked faded grass and leafless 
trees, 30 

I might have dreamed of summer as I 

lay. 
Watching the fallen leaves with the 
soft wind at play. 



Since then, the winter blasts have 
piled 
The white pagodas of the snow 
On these rough slopes, and, strong 
and wild, 
Yon river, in its overflow 
Of spring-time rain and sun, set 

free. 
Crashed with its ices to the sea; 
And over these gray fields, then green 

and gold. 
The summer corn has waved, the 
thunder's organ rolled. 40 



VI 



Rich gift of God ! A year of time ! 
W^hat pomp of rise and shut of 
day, 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN 



■8S 




" Around me all things, stark and dumb, 
Seem praying for the snows to come " 



What hues wherewitli our Northern 
chme 
Makes autumn's dropping wood- 
lands gay, 
What airs outblown from ferny dells, 
And clover-bloom and sweetbrier 
smells, 
What songs of brooks and birds, what 

fruits and flowers, 
Green woods and moonlit snows, have 
in its round been ours ! 

VII 

I know not how, in other lands. 
The changing seasons come and 
go; so 

What splendors fall on Syrian 
sands. 
What purple lights on Alpine 
snow ! 
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits 
On Venice at her watery gates; 
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale. 
And the Alhambra's halls are but a 
traveller's tale. 



VIII 

Yet, on life's current, he who drifts 

Is one with him wlio rows or sails; 

And he who wanders widest lifts S9 

No more of beauty's jealous veils 

Than he who from his doorway sees 

The miracle of flowers and trees, 

Feels the warm Orient in the noonday 

air. 
And from cloud minarets hears the 
sunset call to prayer ! 

IX 

The eye may well be glad that looks 
Where Pharpar's fountains rise 
and fall; 
But he who sees his native brooks 
Laugh in the sun, has seen them all. 
The marble palaces of Ind 
Rise round him in the snow and 
wind; 70 

From his lone sweetbrier Persian Ha- 

fiz smiles. 
And Rome's cathedral awe is in his 
woodland aisles. 



1 86 



POEMS OF NATURE 



And thus it is mv fancy blends 
The near at liaiid and far and 
rare ; 
And while the same horizon l)ends 

Above the silver-sprinkled hair 
Which flashed the light of morning 

skies 
On childhood's wonder-hfted eyes, 
Witiiin its round of sea and sky and 

field, 
Earth wheels with all her zones, the 
Kosmos stands revealed. 80 



XI 



And thus the sick man on his bed, 

The toiler to his task-work bound. 
Behold their prison-walls outspread. 
Their clipped horizon widen 
round ! 
While freedom-giving fancy waits, 
Like Peter's angel at the gates. 
The power is theirs to baffle care and 

pain, 
To bring the lost w^orld back, and 
make it theirs again ! 

XII 

What lack of goodly company, 
When masters of the ancient 
lyre 90 

Obey my call, and trace for me 
Their words of mingled tears and 
fire! 
I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, 
I read the world with Pascal's eyes; 
And prit'st and sage, with solemn 

brows austere. 
And poets, garland-lwimd, tlie Lords 
of Thougiit, draw near. 

XIII 

Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say, 
" In vain the human heart we 

mock ; 
Bring living guests who love the 

day. 
Not ghosts who fly at crow of 

cock! 100 

The herbs we share with flesh and 

blood 
Are better than ambrosial food, 



With laurelled shades." I grant it, no- 
thing loath, 

But doubly blest is he who can par- 
take of both. 

XIV 

He who might Plato's banquet 
grace, 
Have I not seen before me sit. 
And watched his puritanic face. 
With more than Eastern wisdom 
lit? 
Shrewd mystic ! who, upon the back 
Of his Poor Richard's Almanac no 
Wanting the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's 

dream. 
Links Manu's age of thought to Ful- 
ton's age of steam ! 

XV 

Here too, of answering love secure, 
Have I not welcomed to my hearth 
The gentle pilgrim troubadour. 
Whose songs have girdled half the 
earth; 
Whose pages, like the magic mat 
Whereon the Eastern lover sat, 
Have borne me over Rhine-land's pur- 
ple vines, 
And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phry- 
gia's mountain pines? 120 

XVI 

And he, who to the lettered wealth 

Of ages adds the lore unpriced, 
The wisdom and the moral health, 
The ethics of the school of Christ; 
The statesman to his holy trust, 
As the Athenian archon, just, 
Struck down, exiled like him for truth 

alone, 
Has he not graced my home with 
beauty all his own ? 

XVII 

What greetings smile, what fare- 
wells wave. 
What loved ones enter and de- 
part ! 130 
The good, the beautiful, the brave, 
The Heaven-lent treasures of the 
heart 1 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN 



187 



How conscious seems the frozen sod 
And beechen slope whereon they 
trod ! 
The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry 

grass bends 
Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or 
absent friends. 

XVIII 

Then ask not why to these bleak 
hills 

I cling, as clings the tufted moss, 
To bear the winter's lingering chills 

The mocking spring's perpetual 

loss. 140 

I dream of lands where summer 

smiles, 
And soft winds blow from spicy isles, 
But scarce would Ceylon's breath of 

flowers be sweet, 
Could I not feel thy soil. New Eng- 
land, at my feet ! 

XIX 

At times I long for gentler skies, 

And bathe in dreams of softer air, 

But homesick tears would fill the eyes 

That saw the Cross without the 

Bear. 

The pine must whisper to the palm. 

The north-wind break the tropic 

calm; 150 

And with the dreamy languor of the 

Line, 
The North's keen virtue blend, and 
strength to beauty join. 

XX 

Better to stem with heart and hand 
The roaring tide of life, than lie. 
Unmindful, on its flowery strand, 
Of God's occasions drifting by ! 
Better with naked nerve to bear 
The needles of this goading air. 
Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego 
The godlike power to do, the godlike 
aim to know. 160 

XXI 

Home of my heart ! to me more fair 
Than gay Versailles or Windsor's 
halls, 



The painted, shingly town-house 
where 
The freeman's vote for Freedom 
falls! 
The simple roof where prayer is 

made, 
Than Gothic groin and colonnade; 
The living temple of the heart of 

man. 
Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or 
many-spired Milan ! 

XXII 

More dear thy equal village schools, 

Where rich and poor the Bible 

read, 170 

Than classic halls where Priestcraft 

rules. 

And Learning wears the chains of 

Creed; 

Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering 

in 
The scattered sheaves of home and 
kin. 
Than the mad license ushering Lenten 

pains. 
Or holidays of slaves who laugh and 
dance in chains. 

XXIII 

And sweet homes nestle in these 
dales. 
And perch along these wooded 
swells; 
And, blest beyond Arcadian vales, 
They hear the sound of Sabbath 
bells! 180 

Here dwells no perfect man sublime, 
Nor woman winged before her time, 
But with the faults and follies of the 

race. 
Old home-bred virtues hold their not 
unhonored place. 

XXIV 

Here manhood struggles for the 
sake 
Of mother, sister, daughter, wife. 
The graces and the loves which 
make 
The music of the march of life; 
And woman, in her daily round 
Of duty, walks on holy ground, ipp 



i88 



POEMS OF NATURE 



No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here 
is the bad lesson learned at human 
riglits to sneer. 

XXV 

Then let the icy north-wind blow 
The trumpets of the coming 
storm, 
To arrowy sleet and blinding snow 
Yon slanting lines of rain trans- 
form. 
Young hearts shall hail the drifted 

cold, 
As gayly as I did of old; 
And I, who watch them through the 

frosty pane, 
Unenvious, live in them my boyhood 
o'er again. 200 

XXVI 

And I will trust that He who heeds 
The life that hides in mead and 
wold, 
Who hangs yon alder's crimson 
beads. 
And stains these mosses green and 
gold, 
Will still, as He hath done, incline 
His gracious care to me and mine; 
Grant what we ask aright, from wrong 

debar. 
And, as the earth grows dark, make 
brighter every star ! 

XXVII 

I have not seen, I may not see. 
My hopes for man take form in 
fact, 210 

But God will give the victory 

In due time; in that faith I act. 
And he who sees the future sure. 
The badling present may endure. 
And bless, meanwhile, the unseen 

Hand that leads 
The heart's desires beyond the halting 
step of deeds. 

XXVIII 

And tliou, mv song, I send thee 
forth, 
Where harsher songs of mine have 
flown; 



Go, find a place at home and hearth 
Where'er thy singer's name is 
known; 220 

Revive for him the kindly thought 
Of friends; and they who love him 
not. 
Touched by some strain of thine, per- 
chance may take 
The hand he proffers all, and thank 
him for thy sake. 



. THE FIRST FLOWERS 

For ages, on our river borders. 

These tassels in their tawny bloom, 

And willowy studs of downy silver, 
Have prophesied of Spring to come. 

For ages have the unbound waters 
Smiled on them from their pebbly 
hem. 
And the clear carol of the robin 
And song of bluebird welcomed 
them. 

But never yet from smiling river, 
Or song of early bird, have they 10 

Been greeted with a gladder welcome 
Than whispers from my heart to- 
day. 

They break the spell of cold and dark- 
ness. 
The weary watch of sleepless pain; 
And from my heart, as from the 
river. 
The ice of winter melts again. 

Thanks, Mary ! for this wild-wood 
token 

Of Freya's footsteps drawing near; 
Almost, as in the rune of Asgard, 

The growing of the grass I hear. 20 

It is as if the pine-trees called me 
From ceiled room and silent books, 

To see the dance of woodland shad- 
ows. 
And hear the song of April brooks ! 

As in the old Teutonic ballad 
Of Odenwald live bird and tree, 

Together live in bloom and music, 
I blend in song thy flowers and 
thee. 



THE OLD BURYING-GROUND 



189 



Earth's rocky tablets bear forever 
The dint of rain and small bird's 
track : 30 

Who knows but that my idle verses 
May leave some trace by Merrimac ! 

The bird that trod the mellow layers 
Of the young earth is sought in 
vain; 
The cloud is gone that wove the sand- 
stone, 
From God's design, with threads of 
rain! 

So, when this fluid age we live in 
Shall stiffen round my careless 
rhyme, 
Who made the vagrant tracks may 
puzzle 
The savants of the coming time; 40 

And, following out their dim sugges- 
tions. 
Some idly-curious hand may draw 
My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier 
Drew fish and bird from fin and 
claw. 

And maidens in the far-off twilights. 
Singing my words to breeze and 
stream, 

Shall wonder if the old-time Mary 
Were real, or the rhymer's dream ! 



THE OLD BURYING-GROUND 

Our vales are sweet with fern and 
rose. 

Our hills are maple-crowned; 
But not from them our fathers chose 

The village burying-ground. 

The dreariest spot in all the land 

To Death they set apart; 
With scanty grace from Nature's 
hand. 

And none from that of art. 

A winding wall of mossy stone. 

Frost-flung and broken, lines 10 

A lonesome acre thinly grown 
With grass and wandering vines. 

Without the wall a birch-tree shows 
Its drooped and tasselled head; 



Within, a stag-horn sumach grows, 
Fern-leafed, with spikes of red. 

There, sheep that graze the neighbor- 
ing plain 
Like white ghosts come and go. 
The farm-horse drags his fetlock 
chain. 
The cow-bell tinkles slow. 20 

Low moans the river from its bed, 

The distant pines reply; 
Like mourners shrinking from the 
dead, 

They stand apart and sigh. 

Unshaded smites the summer sun. 
Unchecked the winter blast; 

The school-girl learns the place to 
shun. 
With glances backward cast. 

For thus our fathers testified. 

That he might read who ran, 30 

The emptiness of human pride, 
The nothingness of man. 

They dared not plant the grave with 
flowers. 

Nor dress the funeral sod, 
Where, with a love as deep as ours. 

They left their dead with God. 

The hard and thorny path they kept 
From beauty turned aside; 

Nor missed they over those who slept 
The grace to life denied. 40 

Yet still the wilding flowers would 
blow. 

The golden leaves would fall. 
The seasons come, the seasons go, 

And God be good to all. 

Above the graves the blackberry hung 
In bloom and green its wreath. 

And harebells swung as if they rung 
The chimes of peace beneath. 

The beauty Nature loves to share, 
The gifts she hath for all, so 

The common light, the common air, 
O'ercrept the graveyard's wall. 

It knew the glow of eventide, 
The sunrise and the noon. 



igo 



POEMS OF NATURE 




" A lonesome acre tliinly grown 

With grass and wandering vines" 



And glorified and sanctified 
It slept beneath the moon. 

With flowers or snow-flakes for its 
sod, 

Around the seasons ran, 
And eveniiore the love of God 

Rebuked the fear of man. 60 

We dwell with fears on either hand, 

Within a daily strife, 
And spectral problems waiting stand 

Before the gates of life. 



The doul)ts w^e vainly seek to solve, 
The truths we know, are one; 

The known and nameless stars revolve 
Around the Central Sun. 

And if we reap as we have sown, 
And take the dole we deal, 70 

The law of pain is love alone, 
The wounding is to heal. 

Unharmed from change to change we 
glide. 
We fall as in our dreams; 



THE RIVER PATH 



191 



The far-off terror at our side 
A smiling angel seems. 

Secure on God's all-tender heart 
Alike rest great and small; 

Why fear to lose our little part, 
When He is pledged for all ? 80 

O fearful heart and troubled brain ! 

Take hope and strength from 
this, — 
That Nature never hints in vain, 

Nor prophesies amiss. 

Her wild birds sing the same sweet 
stave, 

Her lights and airs are given 
Alike to playground and the grave; 

And over both is Heaven. 



THE PALM-TREE 

Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm. 

On the Indian Sea, by the isles of 

balm? 
Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm ? 

A ship whose keel is of palm beneath, 
Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark 

sheath, 
And a rudder of palm it steereth with. 

Branches of palm are its spars and 

rails. 
Fibres of palm are its woven sails. 
And the rope is of palm that idly 

trails ! 

What does the good ship bear so 

well ? 
The cocoa-nut with its stony shell. 
And the milky sap of its inner cell. 

What are its jars, so smooth and fine. 
But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and 

wine, 
And the cabbage that ripens under the 

Line? 

Who smokes his nargileh, cool and 

calm ? 
The master, whose cunning and skill 

could charm 
Cargo and ship from the bounteous 

palm. 



In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat 

soft, 
From a beaker of palm his drink is 

quaffed, 
And a palm-thatch shields from the 

sun aloft ! 

His dress is woven of palmy strands. 
And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his 

hands, 
Traced with the Prophet's wise com- 
mands ! 

The turban folded about his head 
Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf 

braid. 
And the fan that cools him of palm 

was made. 

Of threads of palm was the carpet 

spun 
Whereon he kneels when the day is 

done. 
And the foreheads of Islam are bowed 

as one ! 

To him the palm is a gift divine. 
Wherein all uses of man combine, — 
House, and raiment, and food, and 
wine! 

And, in the hour of his great release, 
His need of the palm shall only cease 
With the shroud wherein he lieth in 
peace. 

"Allah il Allah!" he sings his psalm. 
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of 

balm; 
"Thanks to Allah who gives the 

palm ! " 



THE RIVER PATH 

No bird-song floated down the hill, 
The tangled bank below was still; 

No rustle from the birchen stem, 
No ripple from the water's hem. 

The dusk of twilight round us grew, 
We felt the falling of the dew; 

For, from us, ere the day was done, 
The wooded hills shut out the sun. 



192 



POEMS OF NATURE 



But on the river's farther side 

We saw the hill-tops glorified, — 10 

A tender glow, exceeding fair, 
A dream of day without its glare. 

With us the damp, the chill, the 

gloom: 
With them the sunset's rosy bloom; 

While dark, through willowy vistas 

seen, 
The river rolled in shade between. 

From out the darkness where we 

trod. 
We gazed upon those hills of God, 

Whose light seemed not of moon or 

sun. 
We spake not, but our thought was 

one. 20 

We paused, as if from that bright 

shore 
Beckoned our dear ones gone before; 



Through their green gates the sun- 
shine sho\ved, 

A long, slant splendor downward 
flowed. 

Down glade and glen and bank it 

rolled; 
It bridged the shaded stream with 

gold; 30 

And, borne on piers of mist, al- 
lied 
The shadowy with the sunlit side ! 

"So," prayed we, "when our feet 

draw near 
The river dark, with mortal fear, 

"And the night cometh chill with 

dew, 
O Father! let Thy light break 

through ! 

" So let the hills of doubt divide, 
So bridge with faith the sunless 
tide! 




" While dark, through willowy vistas seen, 
The river rolled in shade between " 



And .stilled our ix'ating hearts to hear 
The voices lost to mortal ear ! 

Sudden our pathw^ay turned from 

night; 
The hills swung open to the light; 



"So let the eyes that fail on earth 
On Thy eternal hills look forth; 40 

" And in Thy beckoning angels know 
The dear ones whom we loved be- 
low!" 



MOUNTAIN PICTURES 



193 




" Uplift against the blue walls of the sky 
Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave 
Its golden net-work in your belting woods" 



MOUNTAIN PICTURES 

I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWAS- 

SET 

Once more, O Mountains of the 
North, unveil 
Your brows, and lay your cloudy 
mantles by ! 
And once more, ere the eyes that seek 
ye fail, 
Uplift against the blue walls of the 
sky 
Your mighty shapes, and let the sun- 
shine weave 
Its golden net-work in your belting 

woods. 
Smile down in rainbows from your 
falling floods, 
And on your kingly brows at morn and 
, eve 
Set crowns of fire ! So shall my soul 
receive 



Haply the secret of your calm and 

strength, _ 10 

Your unforgotten beauty interfuse 
My common life, your glorious 

shapes and hues 
And sun-dropped splendors at my 

bidding come. 
Loom vast through dreams, and 

stretch in billowy length 
From the sea-level of my lowland home ! 

They rise before me! Last night's 
thunder-gust 

Roared not in vain: for where its 
lightnings thrust 

Their tongues of fire, the great peaks 
seem so near, 

Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold 
and clear, 

I almost pause the wind in the pines to 
hear, 20 

The loose rock's fall, the steps of brows- 
ing deer. 



194 



POEMS OF NATURE 



The clouds that shattered on yon 

shde-worn walls 

And splintered on the rocks their 

spears of rain 

Have set in plav a thousand wuterfalls, 

Milking the diisk antl silence of the 

woi^ds 
(Had with the laughter of the chasing 

floods, 
And luminous with hlown spray and 

silver gleams, 
While, in the vales below, the dry- 
lipped streams 
Sing to the freshened meadow- 
lands again. 
So, let me hope, the battle-storm that 
beats 30 

The land with hail and fire may pass 

away 
With its spent thunders at the 
break of day. 
Like last night's clouds, and leave, as 
it retreats, 
A greener.earth and fairer sk y behind , 
Blown crystal-clear by Freedom's 
Northern wind ! 

11. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET 

I would I were a painter, for the sake 
Of a sweet picture, and of her who 

led, 
A fitting guide, with reverential 
tread, 
Into that mountain mystery. First a 
lake 
Tinted with sunset; next the wavy 
lines 40 

Of far receding hills; and yet 
more far, 
Monadnock lifting from his night of 
y)ines 
His rosy forehead to the evening 
star. 
Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset 

laid 
His head against the West, whose 
warm light made 
His aureole; and o'er him, sharp 
and clear, 
Like a shaft of lightning in mid- 
laimching stayed, 
A single level cloud-line, shone upon 
By the fierce glances of the sunken 
sun. 
Menaced the darkness with its 
golden spear ! so 



80 twilight deepened round us. Still 
and black 

The great woods climbed the moun- 
tain at our back; 

And on their skirts, where yet the lin- 
gering day 

( )n the shorn greenness of the clearing 

The brown old farm-liouse like a 
bird's-nest hung. 
With home-life sounds the desert air 

Avas stirred: 
The bleat of sheep along the hill we 

heard, 
The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet 

well, 
The pasture-bars that clattered as 

they fell; 
Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle 
low^ed; the gate 60 

Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the 
merry weight 
Of sun-brown children, listening, 
while they swung. 
The welcome sound of supper-call 

to hear; 
And down the shadowy lane, in 
tinklings clear, 
The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell 
rung. 
Thus soothed and pleased, our back- 
ward path we took. 
Praising the farmer's home. He 

only spake. 
Looking into the sunset o'er the lake. 
Like one to whom the far-off is 
most near: 
" Yes, most folks think it lias a plea- 
sant look; 70 
I love it for my good old mother's 
sake, 
Who lived and died here in the 
peace of God !" 
The lesson of his w^ords we pon- 
dered o'er, 
As silently we turned the eastern flank 
Of the mountain, where its shadow 

deepest sank, 
Doubling the night along our rugged 

road: 
We felt that man was more than his 
abode, — 
The inward life than Nature's rai- 
ment more; 
And the warm sky, the sundown- 
tinted hill, 



THE PAGEANT 



195 



The forest and the lake, seemed 

dwarfed and dim 80 

Before the saintly soul, whose human 

will 

Meekly in the Eternal footsteps 

trod. 

Making her homely toil and household 

ways 
An earthly echo of the song of praise 
Swelling from angel lips and harps 
of seraphim. 



THE VANISHERS 

Sweetest of all childlike dreams 

In the simple Indian lore, 
Still to me the legend seems 

Of the shapes who flit before. 

Flitting, passing, seen and gone. 
Never reached nor found at rest, 

Baffling search, but beckoning on 
To the Sunset of the Blest. 

From the clefts of mountain rocks. 
Through the dark of lowland 
firs, 10 

Flash the eyes and flow the locks 
Of the mystic Vanishers ! 

And the fisher in his skiff. 
And the hunter on the moss. 

Hear their call from cape and cliff. 
See their hands the birch-leaves 
toss. 

Wistful, longing, through the green 
Twilight of the clustered pines. 

In their faces rarely seen 

Beauty more than mortal shines. 20 

Fringed with gold their mantles flow 
On the slopes of westering knolls; 

In the wind they whisper low 
Of the Sunset Land of Souls. 

Doubt who may, O friend of mine ! 

Thou and I have seen them too; 
On before with beck and sign 

Still they glide, and we pursue. 

More than clouds of purple trail 
In the gold of setting day; 30 

More than gleams of wing or sail 
Beckon from the sea-mist gray. 



Glimpses of immortal youth, 
^ Gleams and glories seen and flown. 
Far-heard voices sweet with truth. 
Airs from viewless Eden blown; 

Beauty that eludes our grasp. 

Sweetness that transcends our taste, 

Loving hands we may not clasp. 
Shining feet that mock our haste; 40 

Gentle eyes we closed below, 
Tender voices heard once more. 

Smile and call us, as they go 
On and onward, still before. 

Guided thus, O friend of mine ! 

Let us walk our little way. 
Knowing by each beckoning sign 

That we are not quite astray. 

Chase we still, with baffled feet. 

Smiling eye and waving hand, 50 

Sought and seeker soon shall meet, 
Lost and found, in Sunset Land ! 



THE PAGEANT 

A SOUND as if from bells of silver. 
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear. 
Through the frost-pictured panes 
I hear. 

A brightness which outshines the 

morning, 
A splendor brooking no delay. 
Beckons and tempts my feet 

away. 

I leave the trodden village highway 
For virgin snow-paths glimmering 

through 
A jewelled elm-tree avenue; 

Where, keen against the walls of sap- 
phire, 10 
The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-em- 
bossed. 
Hold up their chandeliers of 
frost. 

I tread in Orient hafls enchanted, 

I dream the Saga's dream of 

caves 
Gem-lit beneath the Nortli Sea 

waves ! 



196 



POEMS OF NATURE 



I walk the land of Eldorado, 

I touch its luiiiiic gartlcn bowers, 
Its silver leaves and diamond 
flowers 1 

The flora of the mystic mine-world 19 
Around mo lifts on crystal stems 
The petals of its clustered gems ! 

What miracle of weird transforming 
In this wild work of frost and 

light. 
This glimpse of glory infinite ! 

This foregleam of the Holy City 

Like that to him of Patmos given, 
The white bride coming down 
from heaven ! 

How flash the ranked and mail-clad 

alders. 
Through what sharp-glancing 

spears of reeds 
The brook its muffled water 

leads ! 30 

Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb, 
liurns unconsumed: a white, cold 

fire 
Rays out from every grassy spire. 

Each slender rush and spike of mullein, 
Low laurel shrub and drooping 

fern. 
Transfigured, blaze where'er I 
turn. 

How yonder Ethiopian hemlock 

Crowned with his glistening cir- 
clet stands ! 
What jewels light his swarthy 
hands ! 

Herje, where the forest opens south- 
ward, 40 
Between its hospitable pines. 
As through a door, the warm sun 
shines. 

The jewels loosen on the branches. 
And lightly, as the soft winds 

blow, 
Fall, tinkling, on the ice below. 

And through the clashing of their 
cymbals 



1 hoar tiie old famihar fall 

( )f water down the rocky wall. 

Where, from its wintry prison break- 
ing, 49 
In dark and silence hidden long. 
The brook repeats its summer 
song. 

One instant flashing in the sun- 
shine. 
Keen as a sabre from its sheath, 
Then lost again the ice beneath. 

I hear the ral^bit lightly leaping. 

The foolish screaming of the jay, 
The chopper's axe-stroke far 
away; 

The clamor of some neighboring barn- 
yard, 
The lazy cock's belated crow, 59 
Or cattie-tramp in crispy snow. 

And, as in some enchanted forest 

The lost knight hears his comrades 

sing, 
And, near at hand, their bridles 

ring, — 

So welcome I these sounds and voices, 
These airs from far-off summer 

blown , 
This life that leaves me not alone. 

For the white glory overawes me; 
The crystal terror of the seer 
Of Chebar's vision blinds me 
here. 

Rebuke me not, O sapphire heaven ! 70 
Thou stainless earth, lay not on 

me 
Thy keen reproach of purity, 

If, in this august presence-chamber, 
I sigh for summer's leaf-green 

gloom 
And warm airs thick with odor- 
ous bloom ! 

Let the strange frost-work sink and 

crumble, 
And let the loosened tree-boughs 

swing. 
Till all their bells of silver ring. 



A MYSTERY 



197 



Shine warmly down, thou sun of noon- 
time, 
On this chill pageant, melt and 
move 80 

The winter's frozen heart with 
love. 

And, soft and low, thou wind south- 
blowing, 
Breathe through a veil of tender- 

est haze 
Thy prophecy of summer days. 

Come with thy green relief of promise, 
And to this dead, cold splendor 

bring 
The living jewels of the spring ! 



THE PRESSED GENTIAN 

The time of gifts has come again, 
And, on my northern window-pane. 
Outlined against the day's brief light, 
A Christmas token hangs in sight. 
The wayside travellers, as they pass, 
Mark the gray disk of clouded glass; 
And the dull blankness seems, per- 
chance, 
Folly to their wise ignorance. 

They cannot from their outlook see 
The perfect grace it hath for me; 
For there the flower, whose fringes 

through 
The frosty breath of autumn blew, 
Turns from without its face of bloom 
To the warm tropic of my room. 
As fair as when beside its brook 
The hue of bending skies it took. 

So from the trodden ways of earth, 
Seem some sweet souls who veil their 

worth, 
And offer to the careless glance 
The clouding gray of circumstance. 
They blossom best where hearth-fires 

burn. 
To loving eyes alone they turn 
The flowers of inward grace, that hide 
Their beauty from the world outside. 

But deeper meanings come to me, 
My half -immortal flower, from thee! 
Man Judges from a partial view, 
None ever yet his brother knew; 



The Eternal Eye that sees the whole 
May better read the darkened soul, 
And find, to outward sense denied, 
The flower upon its inmost side ! 



A MYSTERY 

The river hemmed with leaning trees 
Wound through its meadows green; 

A low, blue line of mountains showed 
The open pines between. 

One sharp, tall peak above them all 
Clear into sunlight sprang: 

I saw the river of my dreams. 
The mountains that I sang ! 

No clue of memory led me on, 

But well the ways I knew; 10 

A feeling of familiar things 
With every footstep grew. 

Not otherwise above its crag 
Could lean the blasted pine; 

Not otherwise the maple hold 
Aloft its red ensign. 

So up the long and shorn foot-hills 
The mountain road should creep; 

So, green and low, the meadow fold 
Its red-haired kine asleep. 20 

The river wound as it should wind; 

Their place the mountains took; 
The white torn fringes of their clouds 

Wore no unwonted look. 

Yet ne'er before that river's rim 
Was pressed by feet of mine. 

Never before mine eyes had crossed 
That broken mountain line. 

A presence, strange at once and 
known. 

Walked with me as my guide; 30 
The skirts of some forgotten life 

Trailed noiseless at my side. 

Was it a dim-remembered dream ? 

Or glimpse through aeons old ? 
The secret which the mountains kept 

The river never told. 

But from the vision ere it passed 
A tender hope I drew, 



iqS 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Ami, pleasant as a tlawn of spring, 
The thought within nie grew, 40 

That love would temper every change. 

And soften all surprise, 
Anil, misty with the dreams of earth, 

The hills of Heaven arise. 



A SEA DREAM 

We saw the slow tides go and come, 

The curving surf-linos Hghtly drawn. 
The gray rocks touched witli tender 
bloom 
Beneath the fresh-blown rose of 
dawn. 

We saw in richer sunsets lost 

The soml)re pomp of showery 
noons; 
And signalled spectral sails that 
crossed 
The weird, low light of rising moons. 

On stormy eves from cliff and head 
We saw the white spray tossed and 
spurned; 10 

While over all, in gold and red, 

Its face of fire the lighthouse turned. 

The rail-car brought its daily crowds, 
Half curious, half indifferent, 

lAko. j)a.ssing sails or floating clouds, 
We saw them as they came and went, 

But, one calm morning, as we lay 
And watched the mirage-lifted wall 

Of coiust, across the dreamy bay, 
And heard afar the curlew call, 20 

And nearer voices, wild or tame, 
Of airy flock and childish throng. 

Up from the water's edge there came 
Faint snatches of familiar song. 

Carele.ss we heard the singer's choice 
Of old and common airs; at last 

The tender pathos of his voice 
In one low chanson held us fast. 

A song that mingled joy and pain. 
And memories old and sadlv sweet; 

While, timing to its minor strain, 31 
The waves in lapsing cadence beat. 



The waves are glad in breeze and 
sun, 

The rocks are fringed with foam; 
I walk once more a haunted shore, 

A stranger, yet at home, 

A land of dreams I roam. 

Is this the wind, the soft sea-wind 
That stirred thy locks of brown ? 

Are these the rocks whose mosses 
knew 40 

The trail of thy light gown, 
Where boy and girl sat down? 

I see the gray fort's broken wall, 
The boats that rock below; 

And, out at sea, the passing sails 
We saw so long ago 
Rose-red in morning's glow. 

The freshness of the early time 

On every breeze is blown; 
As glad the sea, as blue the sky, — 50 

The change is ours alone; 

The saddest is my own. 

A stranger now, a world-worn man, 
Is he who bears my name; 

But thou, methinks, whose mortal 
life 
Immortal youth became, 
Art evermore the same. 

Thou art not here, thou art not there, 
Thy place I cannot see; 

I only know that where thou art 60 
The blessed angels be, 
And heaven is glad for thee. 

Forgive me if the evil years 
Have left on me their sign; 

Wash out, O soul so beautiful, 
The many stains of mine 
In tears of love divine 1 

I could not look on thee and live, 

If thou wert by my side ; 
The vision of a shining one, 70 

The white and heavenly bride, 

Is well to me denied. 

But turn to me thy dear girl-face 
Without the angel's crown, 

The wedded roses of thy lips, 
Thy loose hair rippling down 
In waves of golden brown. 



HAZEL BLOSSOMS 



[99 



Look forth once more through space 
and time, 

And let thy sweet shade fall 79 

In tenderest grace of soul and form 

On memory's frescoed wall, 

A shadow, and yet all ! 

Draw near, more near, forever dear ! 
Where'er I rest or roam, 

Or in the city's crowded streets, 
Or l^y the l)lown sea foam. 
The thought of thee is home ! 



At breakfast hour the singer read 
The city news, with comment wise, 

Like one who felt the pulse of trade 
Beneath his finger fall and rise. 91 

His look, his air, liis curt speech, told 
The man of action, not of hooks, 

To whom the corners made in gold 
And stocks were more than seaside 
nooks. 

Of life beneath the life confessed 
His song had hinted unawares; 

Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed, 
Of human hearts in bulls and 
bears. 

But eyes in vain were turned to watch 

That face so hard and shrewd and 

strong; 10 1 

And ears in vain grew sharp to catch 
The meaning of that morning song. 



In 



sweet-voiced querist 



vam some 
sought 

To sound him, leaving as she came; 
Her baited album only caught 
A common, unromantic name. 

No word l:)etrayed the mystery fine, 
That trembled on the singer's 
tongue; 100 

He came and went, and left no sign 
Behind him save the song he sung. 



HAZEL BLOSSOMS 

The summer warmth has left the sky. 
The summer songs have died away; 
And, withered, in the footpaths lie 



The fallen leaves, but yesterday 
With ruby and with topaz gay. 

The grass is browning on the hills; 
No pale, belated flowers recall 

The astral fringes of the rills. 
And drearily the dead vines fall, 
Frost-blackened, from the roadside 
wall, 10 

Yet through the gray and sombre 
wood. 
Against the dusk of fir and pine, 

Last of their floral sisteriiood, 

The hazel's yellow blossoms shine, 
The tawny gold of Afric's mine ! 

Small beauty hath my unsung flower, 
For spring to own or summer hail; 

But, in the season's saddest hoiu', 
To skies that weep and winds that 

wail 
Its glad surprisals never fail. 20 

O days grown cold ! O life grown old ! 
No rose of June may bloom again; 

But, like the hazel's twisted gold. 
Through early frost and latter rain 
Shall hints of summer-time remain. 

And as within the hazel's bough 
A gift of mystic virtue dwells. 

That points to golden ores below, 
And in dry desert places tells 
Where flow unseen the cool, sweet 
wells, — 30 

So, in the wise Diviner's hand, 
Be mine the hazel's grateful part, 

To feel, l)eneath a thirsty land, 
The living waters thrill and start, 
The beating of the rivulet's heart ! 

Sufficeth me the gift to light 

Witli latest bloom the dark, cold 

days; 

To call some hidden spring to sight 

That, in these dry and dusty ways, 

Shall sing its pleasant song of 

praise. 4© 

O Love ! the hazel-wand may fail. 
But thou canst lend the surer spell, 

That, passing over Baca's vale. 
Repeats tlie old-time miracle, 
And makes the desert-land a well. 



200 



POEMS OF NATURE 




A gold fringe on the purpling hem 
Of hills the river runs " 



SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP 

A GOLD frinpe on the purpling hem 

Of liills the river runs, 
As down its long, green valley falls 

The last of summer's suns. 
Along its tawny gravel-bed 

Broad-flowing, swift, and still, 
As if its meadow levels felt 

The hurry of the hill, 
NoiseU^ss between its banks of green 

From curve to curve it slips; k 
The drowsy maple-shadows rest 

Like fingers on its lips. 

A waif from Carroll's wildest hills, 
Unstoried and unknown; 



The ursine legend of its name 

Prowls on its banks alone. 
Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn 

As ever Yarrow knew, 
Or, under rainy Irish skies, 

By Spenser's Mulla grew; 20 

And through the gaps of leaning 
trees 

Its mountain cradle shows: 
The gold against the amethyst, 

The green against the rose. 

Touched by a light that hath no 
name, 

A glory never sung. 
Aloft on sky and mountain wall 

Are God's great pictures hung. 



THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL 



20I 



How changed the summits vas fc and old ! 

No longer granite-browed, 30 

They melt in rosy mist; the rock 

Is softer than the cloud; 
The valley holds its breath; no leaf 

Of all its elms is twirled: 
The silence of eternity 

Seems falling on the world. 

The pause before the breaking seals 

Of mystery is this; 
Yon miracle-play of night and day 

Ma.kes dumb its witnesses. 40 

What unpeen altar crowns the hills 

That reach up stair on stair? 
What eyes look through, what white 
wings fan 

These purple veils of air ? 
What Presence from the heavenly 
heights 

To those of earth stoops down ? 
Not vainly Hellas dreamed of Gods 

On Ida' s snowy crown ! 

Slow fades the vision of the sky, 

The golden water pales, so 

And over all the valley-land 

A gray-winged vapor sails. 
I go the common way of all; 

The sunset fires will burn, 
The flowers will blow, the river flow. 

When I no more return. 
No whisper from the mountain pine 

Nor lapsing stream shall tell 
The stranger, treading where I tread. 

Of him who loved them well. 60 

But beauty seen is never lost, 

God's colors all are fast; 
The glory of this sunset heaven 

Into my soul has passed, 
A sense of gladness unconfined 

To mortal date or clime; 
As the soul liveth, it shall live 

Beyond the years of time. 
Beside the mystic asphodels 

Shall bloom the home-born flowers. 
And new horizons flush and glow 71 

With sunset hues of ours. 

Farewell! these smiling hills must 
wear 
Too soon their wintry frown. 
And snow-cold winds from off them 
shake 
The maple's red leaves down. 



But I shall see a summer sun 

Still setting broad and low; 
The mountain slopes shall blush and 
bloom. 

The golden water flow. 80 

A lover's claim is mine on all 

I see to have and hold, — 
The rose-light of perpetual hills, 

And sunsets never cold ! 



THE SEEKING OF THE WATER- 
FALL 

They left their home of summer ease 
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees, 
To seek, by ways unknown to all, 
The promise of the waterfall. 

Some vague, faint rumor to the vale 
Had crept — perchance a hunter's 

tale — 
Of its wild mirth of waters lost 
On the dark woods through which it 

tossed. 

Somewhere it laughed and sang; 
somewhere 

Whirled in mad dance its misty hair; 
But who had raised its veil, or seen 
The rainbow skirts of that Undine ? 

They sought it where the mountain 

brook 
Its swift way to the valley took; 
Along the rugged slope they clomb. 
Their guide a thread of sound and 

foam. 

Height after height they slowly won; 
The fiery javelins of the sun 
Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade 
With rock and vine their steps de- 
layed. 20 

But, through leaf-openings, now and 

then 
They saw the cheerful homes of men. 
And thegreatmountainswiththeir wall 
Of misty purple girdling all. 

The leaves through which the glad 

winds blew 
Sharedthe wild dance the waters knew; 
And where the shadows deepest fell 
The Wood-thrush rang his silver bell. 



202 



pop:ms of nature 



Fringing the stream, at every turn 
Swung lowthe waving fronds of fern; 
From stony cleft and mossy sod 31 
Pale asters sprang, and golden-rod. 

And still the water sang the sweet, 
(Had song that stirred its gliding feet. 
And found in rock and root the keys 
Of its beguiling melodies. 

Heyond. above, its signals flew 
()f"to.ssingfoamthel)irch-treesthrough; 
Now seen, now lost, but bafUiug still 
The weary seekers' slackening will. 40 

Ivich called to each: " JvO here! Lo 

there! 
Its while scarf flutters in the air!" 
They cHiubed anew; the vision fled, 
To beckon higher overhead. 

So toiled they up the mountain-slope 
With faint and ever fainter hope; 
With faint and fainter voice the brook 
Still bade them listen, pause, and 
look. 

Meanwhile below the day was done; 
Above the tall peaks saw the sun 50 
Sink, beam-shorn, to its misty set 
Behind the liills of violet. 

"Here ends our quest!" the seekers 

cried, 
" The brook and rumor both have lied ! 
The phantom of a waterfall 
Has led us at its beck and call." 

Hut one, with years grown wiser, said: 
"So. always baffled, not misled. 
We follow where before us runs 
The vision of the siiining ones. 60 

" Not where they seem their signals fly, 
Their voices while we listen die; 
We cannot keep, however fleet. 
The quick time of their winged feet. 

" From youth to age unresting stray 
Those kindly mockers in our way; 
Vet lead they not, the badling elves. 
To something better than them.selves? 

" Here, though unreach(>d the goal we 

sought, 
Its own reward our toil has brought: 70 



The winding water's sounding rush, 
The long note of the hermit thrush, 

"The turquoise lakes, the glimpse of 

pond 
And river track, and, vast, beyond 
Broad meadows belted round with 

pines. 
The grand uplift of mountain lines ! 

"W^hatmatterthough we seek with pain 
The garden of the gods in vain. 
If lured thereby we climb to greet 
Some wayside blossom Eden-sweet ? 80 

"To seek is better than to gain, 
The fond hope dies as we attain; 
Life's fairest things are those which 

seem. 
The best is that of which we dream. 

"Then let us trust our waterfall 
Still flashes down its rocky wall. 
With rainbow crescent curved across 
Its sunlit spray from moss to moss. 

" And we, forgetful of our pain, 
In thought shall seek it oft again; 90 
Shall see this aster-blossomed sod. 
This sunshine of the golden-rod, 

"And haply gain, through parting 

boughs, 
Grand glimpses of great mountain 

brows 
Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel 

sheen 
Of lakes deep set in valleys green. 

"So failure wins; the consequence 
Of loss l)ecomes its recompense; 
And evermore the end shall tell 
The unreached ideal guided well. 100 

" Our sweet illusions only die 
Fulfilling love's sure prophecy; 
And every wish for better things 
An undreamed beauty nearer brings. 

" For fate is servitor of love; 
Desire and hope and longing prove 
The secret of immortal youth, 
And Nature cheats us into truth. 

"O kind allurers, wisely sent, 
Beguihng wdth benign intent, no 



THE TRAILING ARBUTUS 



203 




And still the water sang the sweet, 
Glad song that stirred its gliding feet " 



Still move us, through divine unrest, 
To seek the loveUest and the best ! 

" Go with us when our souls go free, 
And, in the clear, white light to be, 
Add unto Heaven's beatitude 
The old delight of seeking good !" 



THE TRAILING ARBUTUS 

I WANDERED lonely where the pine- 
trees made 
Against the bitter East their barri- 
cade. 
And, guided by its sweet 



204 



POEMS OF NATT^^E 



/ 



Porfuiiic. I found, within a narrow dell, 
The trailing sprin<; flower tinted like a ■ 

sheU . • 

Amid dry leaves and mossed at my 

feet. 

From under dead boughs, for whose 

lost; the pines 
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blos- 

somin;": vines 



.'^ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER 

Though flowers have perished at the 
touch 

Of Frost, the early comer, 
I hail the season loved so much. 

The good St. Martin's summer. 

O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn, 
And thin moon curving; o'er it ! 




" The trailing spring flower tinted like a sueil " 



Lifted their glad surprise. 
While yet the bluebird smoothed in 

leafless trees 
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea- 
l)reeze, 
Antl snow-drifts lingered under 
April skies. 

As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I 

bent, 
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged 

and pent, 
Which yet find roojn. 
Through care and cumber, coldness 

and decay. 
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial 

day. 
And make tlie sad earth happier for 

their bloom. 



The old year's darling, latest born, 
More loved than all before it ! 

How flamed the sunrise through the 
pines ! 
How stretched the birchen shad- 
ows, lo 
Braiding in long, wind-wavered hnes 
The westward sloping meadows ! 

The sweet day, opening as a flower 

Unfolds its petals tender, 
Renews for us at noontide's hour 

The summer's tempered splendor. 

The birds are hushed; alone the wind, 
That through the woodland searches. 

The red-oak's lingering leaves can find. 
And yellow plumes of larches. 20 



STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM 



205 



But still the balsam-breathing pine 
Invites no thought of sorrow, 

No hint of loss from air like wine 
The eartli's content can borrow. 

The summer and the winter here 
Midway a truce are holding, 

A soft, consenting atmosphere 
Their tents of peace enfolding. 

The silent woods, the lonely hills, 
Rise solemn in their gladness; 30 

The quiet that the valley fills 
Is scarcely joy or sadness. 

How strange ! The autumn yester- 
day 

In winter's grasp seemed dying; 
On whirling winds from skies of gray 

The early snow was flying. 

And now, while over Nature's mood 
There steals a soft relenting, 

I will not mar the present good, 
Forecasting or lamenting. 40 

My autumn time and Nature's hold 

A dreamy tryst together, 
And, both grown old, about us fold 

The golden-tissued weather. 

I lean my heart against the day 
To feel its bland caressing; 

I will not let it pass away 
Before it leaves its blessing. 

God's angels come not as of old 
The Syrian shepherds knew them; so 

In reddening dawns, in sunset gold. 
And warm noon lights I view them. 

Nor need there is, in times like this 
When heaven to earth draws nearer, 

Of wing or song as witnesses 
To make their presence clearer. 

O stream of life, whose swifter flow 

Is of the end forewarning, 
Methinks thy sundown afterglow 

Seems less of night than morning ! 60 

Old cares grow light; aside I lay 
The doubts and fears that trou- 
bled; 

The quiet of the happy day 
Within my soul is doubled. 



That clouds must veil this fair sun- 
shine 

Not less a joy I find it; 
Nor less yon warm horizon line 

That winter lurks behind it. 

The mystery of the untried days 
I close my eyes from reading; 70 

His will be done whose darkest ways 
To light and life are leading ! 

Less drear the winter night shall be, 
If memory clieer and hearten 

Its heavy hours with thoughts of 
thee, 
Sweet summer of St. Martin ! 



STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM 

A CLOUD, like that the old-time He- 
brew saw 
On Carmel prophesying rain, began 
To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan, 
Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a 
flaw 

Of chill wind menaced; then a strong 
blast beat 
Down the long valley's murmuring 

pines, and woke 
The noon-dream of the sleeping 
lake, and broke 
Its smooth steel mirror at the moun- 
tains' feet. 

Thunderous and vast, a fire-veined 
darkness swept 
Over the rough pine-bearded As- 

quam range; 
A wraith of tempest, wonderful and 
strange. 
From peak to peak the cloudy giant 
stepped. 

One moment, as if challenging the 
storm, 
Chocorua's tall, defiant sentinel 
Looked from his watch-tower; then 
the shadow fell, 
And the wdld rain-drift blotted out his 
form. 

And over all the still unhidden sun, 
Weaving its light through slant- 
blown veils of rain, 



2o6 



POEMS OF NATURE 



Smiled on the trouble, us hope 
smiles on pain; 
Ami. wlien the tumult and the strife 
were done, 

With one foot on tlie lake, and one on 
land. 
Fraininj; witliin his crescent's tinted 

streak 
A far-off pieture of the Melvin peak, 
Spent hroken clouds the rainbow's 
angel spanned. 



A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE 

To kneel l)efore some saintly shrine, 
To breathe the health of airs divine, 
Or bathe where sacred rivers flow, 
The cowled and turbaned pilgrims go. 
I too, a palmer, take, as they 
With staff and scallop-shell, my way 
To feel, from burdening cares and ills, 
The strong uplifting of the hills. 

The years are many since, at first, 
For dreamed-of wonders all athirst, lo 
I saw on W^innipesaukee fall 
The shadow of the mountain wall. 
Ail ! \\'here are they who sailed with 

me 
Tiie beautiful island-studded sea? 
And am I he whose keen surprise 
Flashed out from such unclouded eyes? 

Still, when the sun of summer burns, 
My longing for the hills returns; 
And northward, leaving at my back 
The warm vale of the Merrimac, 20 
I go to meet the winds of morn. 
Blown down the hill-gaps, mountain- 
born, 
Hreathe scent of pines, and satisfy 
The hunger of a lowland eye. 

Again I sec the day decline 
Along a ridged horizon line; 
Touching the hill-tops, as a nun 
Her beaded rosary, sinks the sun. 
One lake lies golden, which shall soon 
He silver in the rising moon; 30 

And one, the crimson of the skies 
And moimtain purple multiplies. 

With the untroubled quiet blends 
The distance-softened voice of friends; 



Tiie girl's light laugh no discord !)rings 
To the low^ song the pine-tree sings; 
And, not unwelcome, comes the hail 
Of boyhood from his nearing sail. 
The human presence breaks no spell, 
And sunset still is miracle ! 40 

Calm as the hour, methinks I feel 
A sense of worship o'er me steal; 
Not tliat of satyr-charming Pan, 
No cvdt of Nature shaming man. 
Not Beauty's self, l)ut that which lives 
And shines through all the veils it 

weaves, — 
Soul of the mountain, lake, and wood, 
Their witness to the Eternal Good ! 

And if, by fond illusion, here 
The earth to heaven seems drawing 
near, 50 

And yon outlying range invites 
To other and serener heights. 
Scarce hid behind its topmost swell. 
The shining Mounts Delectable ! 
A dream may hint of truth no less 
Than the sharp light of wakefulness. 

As through her veil of incense smoke 
Of old the spell-rapt priestess spoke, 
More than her heathen oracle. 
May not this trance of sunset tell 60 
That Nature's forms of loveliness 
Their heavenly archetypes confess. 
Fashioned like Israel's ark alone 
From patterns in the Mount made 
known ? 

A holier beauty overbroods 

These fair and faint similitudes; 

Yet not unblest is he wdio sees 

Shadows of God's realities, 

And know^s beyond this masquerade 

Of shape and color, light and shade, 70 

And dawn and set, and wax and 

w^ane. 
Eternal verities remain. 

O gems of sapphire, granite set! 

hills that charmed horizons fret! 

1 know how fair your morns can 

break. 
In rosy light on isle and lake; 
How over wooded slopes can run 
The noonday play of cloud and sun, 
And evening droop her oriflamme 
Of gold and red in still Asquam. 80 



THE WOOD GIANT 



207 



The summer moons may round again, 
And careless feet these hiUs profane; 
These sunsets waste on vacant eyes 
The lavish splendor oi the skies; 
Fashion and folly, misplaced here, 
Sigh for their natural atmosphere, 
And travelled pride the outlook scorn 
Of lesser heights than Matterhorn : 

But let me dream that hill and sky 
Of unseen beauty prophesy; 90 

And in these tinted lakes behold 
The trailing of the raiment fold 
Of that which, still eluding gaze, 
Allures to upward-tending ways. 
Whose footprints make, wherever 

found, 
Our common earth a holy ground. 



SWEET FERN 

The subtle power in perfume found 
Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; 

On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound 
No censer idly burned. 

That power the old-time worships 
knew. 
The Corybantes' frenzied dance, 

»The Pythian priestess swooning 
through 
The wonderland of trance. 

And Nature holds, in wood and field. 
Her thousand sunlit censers still; 

To spells of flower and shrub we 
yield 
Against or with our will. 

I climbed a hill path strange and new 
With slow feet, pausing at each 
turn; 

A sudden w^aft of west wind blew 
The breath of the sweet fern. 

That fragrance from my vision swept 
The alien landscape; in its stead. 

Up fairer hills of youth I stepped, 
As light of heart as tread. 

I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine 
Once more through rifts of wood- 
land shade; 

I knew my river's winding line 
By morning mist betrayed. 



With me June's freshness, lapsing 
brook. 

Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call 
Of birds, and one in voice and look 

In keeping with them all. 

A fern beside the way we went 

She plucked, and, smiling, lield it 

While from her hand the wild, sweet 
scent 
I drank as from a cup. 

O potent witchery of smell ! 

The dust-dry leaves to life return. 
And she who plucked them owns the 
spell 

And lifts her ghostly fern. 

Or sense or spirit? Who shall say 
What touch the chord of memory 
thrills ? 

It passed, and left the August day 
Ablaze on lonely hills. 



THE WOOD GIANT 

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, 

From Mad to Saco river, 
For patriarchs of the primal wood 

We sought with vain endeavor. 

And then w^e said: " The giants old 

Are lost beyond retrieval; 
This pygmy growth the axe has spared 

Is not the wood primeval. 

" Look where we will o'er vale and liill, 
How idle are our searches 10 

For broad-girthed maples, wide- 
limbed oaks. 
Centennial pines and birches! 

"Their tortured limbs the axe and 
saw 
Have changed to beams and tres- 
tles; 
They rest in walls, they float on seas, 
They rot in sunken vessels. 

"This shorn and wasted mountain 
land 

Of underbrush and boulder, — 
Who thinks to see its full-grown tree 

Must live a century older. 20 



2o8 



POEMS OF NATURE 




" How dwarfed the common woodland seemed, 
Before the old-time giant ! " 



At last to us a woodland path, 

To open sunset leading, 
Revealed the Anakim of pines 

Our wildest wish exceeding. 

Alone, the level sun before; 

Below, the lake's green islands; 
Hoyond, in misty distance dim, 

The rugged Northern Highlands. 

Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill 

Of time and change defiant! 30 

How dwarfed the common woodland 
seemed, 
Before the old-time giant ! 

What marvel that, in simpler days 
Of the world's earlv childhood. 



Men crowned with garlands, gifts, and 
praise 
Such monarchs of the wild-wood ? 

That Tyrian maids with flower and 
song 
Danced through the hill grove's 
spaces. 
And hoary-bearded Druids found 
In woods their holy places ? 40 

With somewhat of that Pagan awe 
With Christian reverence blending, 

We saw our pine-tree's mighty arms 
Above our heads extending. 

We heard his needles' mystic rune, 
Now rising, and now dying. 



A DAY 



209 



As erst Dodona's priestess heard 
The oak leaves prophesying. 

Was it the half-unconscious moan 
Of one apart and mateless, 50 

The weariness of unshared power, 
The loneliness of greatness ? 

O dawns and sunsets, lend to him 
Your beauty and your wonder ! 

Blithe sparrow, sing your summer 
song 
His solemn shadow under ! 

Play lightly on his slender keys, 

O wind of summer, waking 
For hills like these the sound of 



seas 
On far-off beaches breaking ! 



60 



And let the eagle and the crow 
Find shelter in his branches, 

When winds shake down his winter 
snow 
In silver avalanches. 

The brave are braver for their 
cheer. 

The strongest need assurance. 
The sigh of longing makes not less 

The lesson of endurance. 



A DAY 

Talk not of sad November, when a 
day 
Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky 

of noon, 
And a wind, borrowed from some 
inorn of June, 
Stirs the brown grasses and the leaf- 
less spray. 



On the unfrosted pool the pillared pines 
Lay their long shafts of shadow : the 

small rill. 
Singing a pleasant song of summer 
still, 
A line of silver, down the hill-slope 
shines. 

Hushed the bird-voices and the hum 
of bees. 
In the thin grass the crickets pipe no 

more; 
But still the squirrel hoards his win- 
ter store. 
And drops his nut-shells from the 
shag-bark trees. 

Softly the dark green hemlocks whis- 
per: high 
Above, the spires of yellowing 

larches show. 
Where the woodpecker and home- 
loving crow 
And jay and nut-hatch winter's threat 
defy. 

O gracious beauty, ever new and 
old! 
O sights and sounds of nature, 

doubly dear 
When the low sunshine warns the 
closing year 
Of snow-blown fields and waves of 
Arctic cold ! 

Close to my heart I fold each lovely 
thing 
The sweet day yields; and, not dis- 
consolate. 
With the calm patience of the 
woods I wait 
For leaf and blossom when God gives 
us Spring ! 




Charles Sumuer (see p. 241) 



PERSONAL POEMS 



A LAMENT 

" The parted spirit 
Knoweth it not our sorrow? Answereth not 
Its blessing to our tears?" 

The circle is broken, one seat is for- 
saken, 

One bnd from the tree of our friend- 
ship is sliaken; 

One licart from amonj^ us no longer 
shall thrill 

\\ ith joy ill our gladness, or grief in 
our ill. 



Weep ! lonely and lowly are slumber- 
ing now 

The light of her glances, the pride of 
her brow; 

Weep ! sadly and long shall we listen 
in vain 

To hear the soft tones of her welcome 
again. 

Give our tears to the dead ! For hu- 
manity's claim 

From its silence and darkness is ever 
the same; i© 



TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS 



211 



The hope of that world whose exist- 
ence is bUss 

May not stifle the tears of the mourn- 
ers of this. 

For, oh ! if one glance the freed spirit 
can throw 

On the scene of its troubled proba- 
tion below, 

Than the pride of the marble, the 
pomp of the dead, 

To that glance will be dearer the tears 
which we shed. 

Oh, who can forget the mild light of 
her smile, 

Over lips moved with music and feel- 
ing the while, 

The eye's deep enchantment, dark, 
dream-like, and clear, 

In the glow of its gladness, the shade 
of its tear, 20 

And the charm of her features, while 

over the whole 
Played the hues of the heart and the 

sunshine of soul; 
And the tones of her voice, like the 

music which seems 
Murmured low in our ears by the 

Angel of dreams ! 

But holier and dearer our memories 
hold 

Those treasures of feeling, more pre- 
cious than gold, 

The love and the kindness and pity 
which gave 

Fresh flowers for the bridal, green 
wreaths for the grave ! 

The heart ever open to Charity's claim. 
Unmoved from its purpose by censure 

and blame, 30 

While vainly alike on her eye and her ear 
Fell the scorn of the heartless, the 

jesting and jeer. 

How true to our hearts was that beau- 
tiful sleeper ! 

With smiles for the joyful, with tears 
for the weeper! 

Yet, evermore prompt, whether 
mournful or gay, 

With warnings in love to the passing 
astray. 



For, though spotless herself, she could 
sorrow for them 

Who sullied with evil the spirit's Dure 
gem; 

And a sigh or a tear could the erring 
reprove, 

And the sting of reproof was still tem- 
pered by love. 40 

As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting 
in heaven. 

As a star that is lost when the day- 
light is given, 

As a glad dream of slumber, which 
wakens in bliss. 

She hath passed to the world of the 
holy from this. 



TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES 
B. STORRS 

LATE PRESIDENT OF WESTERN RE- 
SERVE COLLEGE 

Thou hast fallen in thine armor, 

Thou martyr of the Lord ! 
With thy last breath crving, "On- 
ward!" 

And thy hand upon the sword. 
The haughty heart derideth, 

And the sinful lip reviles. 
But the blessing of the perishing 

Around thy pillow smiles ! 

When to our cup of trembling 

Tlie added drop is given, 10 

And the long-suspended thunder 

Falls terribly from Heaven, — 
When a new and fearful freedom 

Is proffered of the Lord 
To the slow-consuming Famine, 

The Pestilence and Sword ! 

When the refuges of Falsehood 

Shall be swept away in wrath, 
And the temple shall be shaken, 

With its idol, to the earth, 20 

Shall not thy words of warning 

Be all reniembered then ? 
And thy now unheeded message 

Burn in the hearts of men ? 

Oppression's hand may scatter 
Its nettles on thy tomb, 



212 



PERSONAL POEMS 



And even Christian bosoms 

Deny thy memory room; 
For lyin^; lips shall torture 

Thy mercy into crime, 3© 

And the slanderer shall flourish 

As the bay-tree for a time. 

Hut whore the south-wind lingers 

( )n Carolina's pines, 
Or falls the careless sunbeam 

Down Georgia's golden mines; 
Where now beneath his burthen 

The toihng slave is driven; 
Where now a tyrant's mockery 

Is offered unto Heaven; 40 

Where Mammon hath its altars 

Wet o'er with human blood, 
And pride and lust debases 

The workmanship of God, — 
There shall thy praise be spoken. 

Redeemed from Falsehood's ban. 
When the fetters shall be broken. 

And the slave shall be a man ! 

Joy to thy spirit, brother! 

A thousand hearts are warm, so 
A thousand kindred bosoms 

Are baring to the storm. 
^^'hat though red-handed Violence 

With secret Fraud combine? 
The wall of fire is roimd us. 

Our Present Help was thine. 

Lo, the waking up of nations. 

From Slavery's fatal sleep; 
The murmur of a Universe, 

Deep calling unto Deep! 60 

Joy to tiiy spirit, brother! 

( )n every wind of lieaven 
The onward cheer and summons 

( )f Freedom's voice is given ! 

Glory to God forever ! 

Beyond the despot's will 
Tlie soul of Freedom liveth 

linporishal)le still. 
The words which thou hast uttered 

Are of that soul a part, 70 

And the good seed tliou hast scattered 

Is springing from the heart. 

In the evil days before us, 
And the trials yet to come, 

In the shadow of the prison. 
Or the cruel martyrdom, — 



We will think of thee, O brotlier ! 

And thy sainted name shall be 
In the blessing of the captive. 

And the anthem of the free. 



80 



1834 



LINES 



on the death of s. oliver torrey, 
secretary of the boston young 
men's anti-slavery society 

Gone before us, O our brother, 

To the spirit-land ! 
Vainly look we for another 

In thy place to stand. 
Who shall offer youth and beauty 

On the wasting shrine 
Of a stern and lofty duty, 

With a faith like thine ? 

Oh, thy gentle smile of greeting 

Who again shall see ? 10 

Who amidst the solemn meeting 

Gaze again on thee ? 
Who, when peril gathers o'er us, 

Wear so calm a brow ? 
Who, with evil men before us. 

So serene as thou ? 

Early hath the spoiler found thee, 

Brother of our love ! 
Autumn's faded earth around thee. 

And its storms above ! 20 

Evermore that turf lie lightly, 

And, with future showers. 
O'er thy slumbers fresh and brightly 

Blow the summer flowers ! 

In the locks thy forehead gracing, 

Not a silvery streak; 
Nor a line of sorrow's tracing 

On thy fair young cheek; 
Eyes of light and lips of roses, 

Such as Hylas wore, — 
Over all that curtain closes, 

W^hich shall rise no more ! 

Will the vigil Love is keeping 

Round that grave of thine. 
Mournfully, like Jazer weeping 

Over Sibmah's vine; 
Will the pleasant memories, swelling 

Gentle hearts, of thee, 
In the spirit's distant dwelling 

All unheeded be ? 



TO- 

If the spirit ever gazes, 

From its journeyings, back; 
If the immortal ever traces 

O'er its mortal track; 
Wilt thou not, O brother, meet us 

Sometimes on our way, 
And, in hours of sadness, greet us 

As a spirit may ? 

Peace be with thee, O our brother, 

In the spirit-land ! so 

Vainly look we for another 

In thy place to stand. 
Unto Truth and Freedom giving 

All thy early powers. 
Be thy virtues with the living, 

And thy spirit ours ! 



TO 



WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN S JOURNAL 

" Get the writings of John Woolman by 
heart." — Essays of Elia. 

Maiden ! with the fair brown tresses 
Shading o'er thy dreamy eye, 

Floating on thy thoughtful fore- 
head 
Cloud wreaths of its sky. 

Youthful years and maiden beauty, 
Joy with them should still abide, — 

Instinct take the place of Duty, 
Love, not Reason, guide. 

Ever in the New rejoicing, 

Kindly beckoning back the Old, lo 
Turning, with the gift of Midas, 

All things into gold. 

And the passing shades of sadness 
Wearing even a welcome guise. 

As, when some bright lake lies open 
To the sunny skies, 

Every wing of bird above it. 
Every light cloud floating on. 

Glitters like that flashing mirror 
In the self-same sun. 20 

But upon thy youthful forehead 
Something like a shadow Hes; 

And a serious soul is looking 
From thy earnest eyes. 



213 

With an early introversion. 

Through the forms of outward 
things. 
Seeking for the subtle essence. 

And the hidden springs. 

Deeper than the gilded surface 

Hath thy wakeful vision seen, 30 

Farther than the narrow present 
Have thy journeyings been. 

Thou hast midst Life's empty noises 
Heard the solemn steps of Time, 

And the low mysterious voices 
Of another clime. 

All the mystery of Being 

Hath upon thy spirit pressed, — 
Thoughts which, like the Deluge wan- 
derer, 

Find no place of rest: 40 

That which mystic Plato pondered, 
That -^hich Zeno heard with awe, 

And the star-rapt Zoroaster 
In his night watch saw. 

From the doubt and darkness spring- 
ing _ 

Of the dim, uncertain Past, 
Moving to the dark still shadows 

O'er the Future cast. 

Early hath Life's mighty question 49 
Thrilled within thy heart of youth, 

With a deep and strong beseeching: 
What and where is Truth ? 

Hollow creed and ceremonial, 

Whence the ancient life hath fled, 

Idle faith unknown to action, 
Dull and cold and dead, 

Oracles, whose wire-worked mean- 
ings 

Only wake a quiet scorn, — 
Not from these thy seeking spirit 

Hath its answer drawn. 60 

But, like some tired child at even, 
On thy mother Nature's breast. 

Thou, methinks, art vainly seeking 
Truth, and peace, and rest. 

O'er that mother's rugged features 
Thou art throwing Fancy's veil, 



214 



PERSONAL POEMS 



I/i<;lit and soft as woven moonbeams, 
Beautiful and frail ! 

O'er the rough cliart of Existence, 
Rocks of sin and wastes of woe, 70 

Soft airs l)reatlie, and green leaves 
tremble. 
And cool fountains flow. 

And to thee an answer cometh 
From tiie earth and from the sky, 

And to tiieo the hills and waters 
And tlie stars reply. 

But a soul-sufficing answer 

Hath no outward origin; 
More than Nature's many voices 

May 1)0 heard within. 80 

I'A'on as tiie great Augustine 

(Questioned earth and sea and sky, 

And the dusty tomes of learning 
And old poesy. 

But his earnest spirit needed 

Mf)ro than outward Nature taught; 

More than blest the poet's vision 
Or the sage's tiiought. 

Only in the gathered silence 

( )f a calm and waiting frame, 90 
Light and wisdom as from Heaven 

To the seeker came. 

Not to ease and aimless quiet 
Doth tiiat inward answer tend, 

But to works of love and duty 
As our being's end; 

Not to idl(> dreams and trances. 
Length of face, and solemn tone, 

But to Faith, in daily striving 

And performance shown. 100 

Earnest toil and strong endeavor 

Of a spirit which within 
Wrestles with familiar evil 

And besetting sin; 

And without, with tireless vigor, 
Steady heart, and weapon strong, 

In the ])ower of truth assailing 
Every form of wrong. 

(luided thus, how passing lovely 
Is the track of Woolman's feet! no 



And his brief and simple record 
How serenely sweet ! 

O'er life's humblest duties throwing 
Light the earthling never knew. 

Freshening all its dark waste places 
As with Hermon's dew. 

All which glows in Pascal's pages. 
All which sainted Guion sought. 

Or the blue-eyed German Rahel 
Half -unconscious taught: 120 

Beauty, such as Goethe pictured, 
Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed 

Living warmth and starry bright- 
ness 
Round that poor man's head. 

Not a vain and cold ideal, 

Not a poet's dream alone, 
But a presence warm and real, 

Seen and felt and known. 

When the red right-hand of slaughter 
Moulders with the steel it swung, 130 

When the name of seer and poet 
Dies on Memory's tongue, 

All bright thoughts and pure shall 
gather 
Round that meek and suffering 
one, — 
Glorious, like the seer-seen angel 
Standing in the sun ! 

Take the good man's book and pon- 
der 

What its pages say to thee; 
Blessed as the hand of healing 

May its lesson be. mo 

If it only serves to strengthen 
Yearnings for a higher good. 

For the fount of living waters 
And diviner food; 

If the pride of human reason 
Feels its meek and still rebuke, 

Quailing like the eye of Peter 
From the Just One'g' look ! 

If with readier ear thou heedest 
What the Inward Teacher saith,iso 

Listening with a willing spirit 
And a childlike faith, — 



LEGGETT'S MONUMENT 



215 




William Leggett 



Thou mayst live to bless the giver, 
Who, himself but frail and weak. 

Would at least the highest welfare 
Of another seek; 

And his gift, though poor and lowly 
It may seem to other eyes. 

Yet may prove an angel holy 

In a pilgrim's guise. 160 



LEGGETT'S MONUMENT 

"Ye build the tombs of the prophets." — 
Holy Writ. 

Yes, pile the marble o'er him ! It is 
well 
That ye who mocked him in his long 
stern strife, 



And planted in the pathway of his 
Ufe 
The ploughshares of your hatred hot 
from hell, 
Who clamored down the bold re- 
former when 
He pleaded for his captive fellow- 
men, 
Who spurned him in the market-place, 
and sought 
Within thy walls, St. Tammany, to 
bind 
In party chains the free and honest 
thought, 
The angel utterance of an upright 
mind. 
Well is it now that o'er his grave ye 

raise 
The stony tribute of your tardy 
praise, 



2l6 



PERSONAL POEMS 



For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame 
Of the brave heart beneath, but of the 
builders' shame! 



TO A FRIEND 

ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE 

How smiled the land of France 
Under thy blue eye's glance, 

Li<i;lit-hearted rover ! 
Old walls of chateaux gray, 
Towers of an early day, 
Which the Tiiree "Colors play 

Flauntingly over. 

Now midst the brilliant train 
Thronging the banks of Seine 

Now midst the splendor lo 

Of the wild Alpine range, 
Waking with change on change 
Thoughts in thy young heart strange. 

Lovely, and tender. 

Vales, soft Elysian, 
Like those in the vision 

Of Mirza, when, dreaming. 
He saw the long hollow dell. 
Touched by the prophet's spell. 
Into an ocean swell 20 

With its isles teeming. 

Cliffs wrapped in snows of years, 
Splintering with icy spears 

Autumn's blue heaven: 
Loose rock and frozen slide. 
Hung on the mountain-side. 
Waiting their hour to glide 

Downward, storm-driven! 



Rhine-stream, by castle old. 
Baron's and rol^ber's hold. 

Peacefully flowing; 
Sweeping tlirough vineyards green. 
Or wliere tiie cliffs are seen 
O'er the broad wave between 

Grim shadows throwing. 

( )r, where St. Peter's dome 
Swells o'er eternal Rome, 

Vast, dim, and solemn; 
Hymns ever chanting low. 
Censers swimg to and fro, 
Saljle stoics sweeping slow, 

Cornice and column ! 



30 



so 



Oh, as from each and all 
Will there not voices call 

Evermore back again ? 
In the mind's gallery 
Wilt thou not always see 
Dim phantoms beckon thee 

O'er that old track again? 

New forms thy presence haunt, 
New voices softly chant. 

New faces greet thee ! 
Pilgrims from many a shrine 
Hallow^ed by poet's hne, 
At memory's magic sign, 

Rising to meet thee. 



And when such visions come 
Unto thy olden home. 

Will they not waken 
Deep thoughts of Him whose hand 60 
Led thee o'er sea and land 
Back to the household band 

Whence thou wast taken ? 



While, at the sunset time. 
Swells the cathedral's chime, 

Yet, in thy dreaming, 
While to thy spirit's eye 
Yet the vast mountains lie 
Piled in the Switzer's sky. 

Icy and gleaming: 



70 



80 



Prompter of silent prayer. 
Be the wild picture there 

In the mind's chamber, 
And, through each coming day 
Him who, as staff and stay. 
Watched o'er thy wandering way, 

Freshly remember. 

So, when the call shall be 
Soon or late unto thee, 

As to all given, 
Still may that picture live, 
All its fair forms survive, 
And to thy spirit give 

Gladness in Heaven ! 



LUCY HOOPER 

They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, 
That all of thee we loved and cher- 
ished 
Has with thy summer roses per- 
ished; 



LUCY HOOPER 



217 



And left, as its young beauty fled, 
An ashen memory in its stead. 
The twiUght of a parted day 

Whose fading light is cold and 

vain, 
The heart's faint echo of a strain 
Of low, sweet music passed away. 
That true and loving heart, that gift 10 
Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound. 
Bestowing, with a glad unthrift. 
Its sunny light on all around, 
Affinities which only could 
Cleave to the pure, the true, and good; 
And sympathies which found no 

rest, 
Save with the loveliest and best. 
Of them — of thee — remains there 
naught 
But sorrow in the mourner's breast ? 
A shadow in the land of thought ? 20 
No ! Even my weak and trembling 
faith 
Can lift for thee the veil which 

doubt 
And human fear have drawn about 
The all-awaiting scene of death. 

Even as thou wast I see thee still; 
And, save the absence of all ill 
And pain and weariness, which here 
Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear, * 
The same as when, two summers back, 
Beside our childhood's Merrimac, 30 
I saw thy dark eye wander o'er 
Stream, sunny upland, rocky shore, 
And heard thy low, soft voice alone 
Midst lapse of waters, and the tone 
Of pine-leaves by the west-wind 

blown. 
There 's not a charm of soul or brow. 

Of all we knew and loved in thee. 
But lives in holier beauty now, 

Baptized in immortality ! 
Not mine the sad and freezing dream 

Of souls that, with their earthly 
mould, 41 

Cast off the loves and joys of old, 
Unbodied, like a pale moonbeam. 

As pure, as passionless, and cold; 
Nor mine the hope of Indra's son, 

Of slumbering in oblivion's rest, 
Life's myriads blending into one. 

In blank annihilation blest; 
Dust-atoms of the infinite. 
Sparks scattered from the central 
light, so 



And winning back through mortal pain 
Their old unconsciousness again. 
No ! I have friends in Spirit Land, 
Not shadows in a shadowy band. 
Not others, but themselves are 
they. 
And still I think of them the same 
As when the Master's summons came; 
Their change, — the holy morn-light 

breaking 
Upon the dream-worn sleeper, wak- 
ing, — 
A change from twilight into day. 60 

They 've laid thee midst the household 

graves, 
Where father, brother, sister lie; 
Below thee sweep the dark blue waves, 
Above thee bends the summer sky. 
Thy own loved church in sadness read 
Her solemn ritual o'er thy head, 
And blessed and hallowed with her 

prayer 
The turf laid lightly o'er thee there. 
That church, whose rites and liturgy, 
Sublime and old, were truth to thee, 70 
Undoubted to thy bosom taken. 
As symbols of a faith unshaken. 
Even I, of simpler views, could feel 
The beauty of thy trust and zeal; 
And, owning not thy creed, could see 
How deep a truth it seemed to thee, 
And how thy fervent heart had 

thrown 
O'er all, a coloring of its own, 
And kindled up, intense and warm, 
A life in every rite and form, 80 

As, when on Chebar's banks of old, 
The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled, 
A spirit filled the vast machine, 
A life "within the wheels" was seen. 

Farewell ! A little time, and we 
Who knew thee well, and loved 
thee here, 
One after one «hall follow thee 

As pilgrims through the gate of fear, 
Which opens on eternity. 
Yet shall we cherish not the less 90 
All that is left our hearts mean- 
while; 
The memory of thy loveliness 

Shall round our weary pathway 
smile. 
Like moonlight when the sun has set, 
A sweet and tender radiance yet. 



i8 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Tliouglits of tliy clear-eyed sense of 
duty, 
Thy generous scorn of all things 
wrong, 
The truth, the strength, the graceful 
beauty 
Which blended in thy song. 
All lovely tilings, by thee beloved, loo 
Shall whisper to our hearts of thee; 
These green hills, where thy childhood 
roved, 
Von river winding to the sea, 
The sunset liglit of autumn eves 

Reflecting on the deep, still floods, 
Cloud, crimson sky, and trembling 
leaves 
Of rainbow-tinted woods. 
These, in our view, shall henceforth 

take 
A tenderer meaning for thy sake; 
And all thou lovedst of earth and 
sky no 

Seem sacred to thy memory. 

POLLEN 



ON READING HIS ESSAY ON THE 
TURE state" 



FU- 



Friend of my soul ! as with moist eye 
I look up from this page of thine. 

Is it a dream that thou art nigh, 
Thy mild face gazing into mine? 

That presence seems before me now, 
A placid heaven of sweet moonrise. 

When, dew-like, on the earth below 
Descends the ([uiet of the skies. 

The calm brow through the parted 

hair, 

The gentle lips which knew no 

guile, lo 

vSoftening the blue eye's thoughtful care 

With the bland beauty of their 

smile. 

Ah me ! at times that last dread scone 
( )f Frost and Fire and moaning Sea 

Will cast its shade of doui)t between 
The failing eyes of Faith* and thee. 

Yet, lingering o'er thy charmed page. 
Where through the twilight air of 
earth, 



Alike enthusiast and sage. 

Prophet and bard, thou gazest 
forth, 20 

Lifting the Future's solemn veil; 

The reaching of a mortal hand 
To put aside the cold and pale 

Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land ; 

In thoughts which answer to my own, 
In words which reach my inward 
ear. 
Like whispers from the void Un- 
known, 
I feel thy living presence here. 

The waves which lull thy body's rest. 

The dust thy pilgrim footsteps 

trod, 30 

Un wasted, through each change, attest 
The fixed economy of God. 

Shall these poor elements outlive 
The mind whose kingly will they 
wrought ? 

Their gross unconsciousness survive 
Thy godlike energy of thought ? 

Thou livest, Pollen ! not in vain 
Hath thy fine spirit meekly borne 

The burthen of Life's cross of pain. 
And the thorned crown of suffering 
worn. 40 

Oh, while Life's solemn mystery 
glooms 
Around us like a dungeon's wall. 
Silent earth's pale and crowded 
tombs. 
Silent the heaven which bends o'er 
all! 

While day by day our loved ones glide 
In spectral silence, hushed and lone, 

To the cold shadows which divide 
The living from the dread Un- 
known; 

While even on the closing eye, 

And on the lip which moves in vain, 

The seals of that stern mystery 
Their undiscovered trust retain; 

And only midst the gloom of death, 
Its mournful doubts and haunting 
fears, 



TO J. P. 



219 



Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and 
Faith, 
Smile dimly on us through their 
tears; 

'T is something to a heart like mine 
To think of thee as living yet; 

To feel that such a light as thine 
Could not in utter darkness set. 60 

Less dreary seems the untried way 
Since thou hast left thy footprints 
there. 

And beams of mournful beauty play 
Round the sad Angel's sable hair. 

Oh ! at this hour when half the sky 
Is glorious with its evening light, 

And fair broad fields of summer lie 
Hung o'er with greenness in my 
sight; 

While through these elm-boughs wet 
with rain 
The sunset's golden walls are seen, 70 
With clover-bloom and yellow grain 
And wood-draped hill and stream 
between ; 

I long to know if scenes like this 
Are hidden from an angel's eyes; 

If earth's familiar loveliness 

Haunts not thy heaven's serener 
skies. 

For sweetly here upon thee grew 
The lesson which that beauty gave, 

The ideal of the pure and true 

In earth and sky and gliding 
wave. 

And it may be that all which lends 
The soul an upward impulse liere, 

With a diviner beauty blends, 
And greets us in a holier sphere. 

Through groves where blighting never 
fell 
The humbler flowers of earth may 
twine ; 
And simple draughts from childhood's 
well 
Blend with the angel-tasted wine. 

But be the prying vision veiled. 
And let the seeking lips be dumb, 90 



Where even seraph eyes have failed 
Shall mortal blindness seek to 
come? 

We only know that thou hast gone. 
And that the same returnless tide 
Which bore thee from us still glides 
on, 
And we who mourn thee with it 
glide. 

On all thou lookest we shall look, 
And to our gaze erelong shall turn 

That page of God's mysterious book 
We so much wish yet dread to 
learn. 100 

With Him, before whose awful power 
Thy spirit bent its trembling knee; 

Who, in the silent greeting flower, 
And forest leaf, looked out on thee, 

We leave thee, with a trust serene, 
Which Time, nor Change, nor 
Death can move. 
While with thy childlike faith we lean 
On Him whose dearest name is 
Love! 



TO J. P. 

John Pierpont, the eloquent preacher ancj 
poet of Boston. 

Not as a poor requital of the joy 
With which my childhood heard 

that lay of thine, 
Which, like an echo of the song 
divine 

At Bethlehem breathed above the 
Holy Boy, 
Bore to my ear the Airs of Pales- 
tine, — 

Not to the poet, but the man I 
bring 

In friendship's fearless trust my offer- 
ing: 

How much it lacks I feel, and thou 
wilt see, 

Yet well I know that thou hast 
deemed with me 

Life all too earnest, and its time too 
short 

For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful 
sport; 



220 



PERSONAL POEMS 




John Pierpont 



And pc'irded for thy constant strife 
witli wrong, 
Like Xehemiaii fighting while he 
wrought 
Tlie broken walls of Zion, even thy 
song 
Hath a nulc martial tone, a blow in 
every thought ! 



CHALKLEY HALT; 

How l)land and sweet the greeting of 
this breeze 
To him who flies 
From crowded street and red wall's 

wcurv gleam, 
Till far beliind him like a hideous 
dream 
The close dark city lies ! 



Here, while the market murmurs, 
while men throng 
The marble floor 
Of Mammon's altar, from the crush 

and din 
Of the world's madness let me gather in 
My better thoughts once more. lo 

Oh, once again revive, while on my 
ear 
The cry of Gain 
And low hoarse hum of Traffic die 

away, 
Ye blessed memories of my early day, 
Like sere grass wet with rain ! 

Once more let God's green earth and 
sunset air 
Old feelings waken; 
Through weary years of toil and strife 
and ill, 



CHALKLEY HALL 



221 



Oh, let me feel that my good angel 
still 
Hath not his trust forsaken. 20 

And well do time and place befit my 
mood: 
Beneath the arms 
Of this embracing wood, a good man 

made 
His home, like Abraham resting in the 
shade 
Of Mamre's lonely palms. 

Here, rich with autumn gifts of count- 
less years, 
The virgin soil 
Turned from the share he guided, and 

in rain 
And summer sunshine throve tl^e 
fruits and grain 
Which blessed his honest toil. 30 

Here, from his voyages on the stormy 

seas, 
Weary and worn, 
He came to meet his children and to 

bless 
The Giver of all good in thankfulness 
And praise for his return. 

And here his neighbors gathered in to 
greet 
Their friend again. 
Safe from the wave and the destroy- 
ing gales, 
Which reap untimely green Ber- 
muda's vales. 
And vex the Carib main. 40 

To hear the good man tell of simple 
truth, 
Sown in an hour 
Of weakness in some far-off Indian 

isle. 
From the parched bosom of a barren 
soil, 
Raised up in life and power: 

How at those gatherings in Barbadian 
vales, 
A tendering love 
Came o'er him, hke the gentle rain 

from heaven, 
And words of fitness to his lips were 
given, 
And strength as from above: s© 



How the sad captive listened to the 
Word, 
Until his chain 
Grew lighter, and his wounded spirit 

felt 
The healing balm of consolation melt 
Upon its hfe-long pain: 

How the armed warrior sat him down 
to hear 
Of Peace and Truth, 
And the proud ruler and his Creole 

dame. 
Jewelled and gorgeous in her beauty 
came, 
And fair and bright-eyed youth. 60 

Oh, far away beneath New England's 
sky. 
Even when a boy. 
Following my plough by Merrimac's 

green shore. 
His simple record I have pondered 
o'er 
With deep and quiet joy. 

And hence this scene, in sunset glory 
warm, — 
Its woods around. 
Its still stream winding on in light and 

shade. 
Its soft, green meadows and its upland 
glade, — 
To me is holy ground. 70 

And dearer far than haunts where 
Genius keeps 
His vigils still; 
Than that where Avon's son of song is 

laid, 
Or Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's 
shade. 
Or Virgil's laurelled hill. 

To the gray walls of fallen Para- 
clete, 
To Juliet's urn, 
Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange- 
grove. 
Where Tasso sang, let young Romance 
and Love 
Like brother pilgrims turn. 80 

But here a deeper and serener 
charm 
To all is given; 



222 



PERSONAL POEMS 



And Messed iiicinories of the faithful 
dead 

O'er wood aiul vale and meadow- 
stream have shed 
The holy hues of Heaven! 

GONE 

Anothkij hand is heckoning us, 

Another eall is fjiven; 
And "flows once more with Angel-steps 

The path which reaches Heaven. 

( )ur young and gentle friend, whose 
smile 

Made brighter summer hours, 
Amitl the frosts of autumn time 

Has left us with the flowers. 

No paling of the cheek of bloom 
P'orewarned us of decay; lo 

No shadow from the Silent Land 
Fell round our sister's way. 

The light of her young life went 
down, 

As sinks behind the hill 
The glory of a setting star, 

Clear, suddenly, and still. 

As pure and sweet, her fair brow 
seemed 
Eternal ;us the sky; 
And like the l^rook's low song, her 
voice, — 
A sound which could not die. 20 

And half we deemed she needed not 
Tiie changing of her sphere. 

To give to Heaven a Shining One, 
Who walked an Angel here. 

The l)lessing of her ([uiet life 

Fell on us like the dew; 
And good thoughts wliere her foot- 
steps pressed 

Like fairy blossoms grew. 

Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds 
Were in her very look; 30 

\\ e read her face, as one who reads 
A true and holy book: 

The measure of a blessed hymn. 
To which our hearts could move; 



The breathing of an inward psalm, 
A canticle of love. 

We miss her in the place of prayer, 
And by the hearth-fire's light; 

We pause beside her door to hear 
Once more her sweet "Good- 
night ! " 40 

There seems a shadow on the day, 
Her smile no longer cheers; 

A dimness on the stars of night, 
Like eyes that look through tears. 

Alone mito our Father's will 
One thought hath reconciled; 

That He whose love exceedeth ours 
Hath taken home His child. 

Fold her, O Father ! in Thine arms, 
And let her henceforth be 50 

A messenger of love between 
Our human hearts and Thee. 

Still let her mild rebuking stand 
Between us and the wrong. 

And her dear memory serve to make 
Our faith in Goodness strong. 

And grant that she who, trembling, 
here 

Distrusted all her powers. 
May welcome to her holier home 

The well-beloved of ours. 60 



TO RONGE 

Strike home, strong-hearted man! 
Do^vn to the root 

Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel. 

Thy work is to hew down. In God's 
name then 

Put nerve into thy task. Let other 
men 

Plant, as they may, that better tree 
whose fruit 

The wounded bosom of the Church 
shall heal. 

Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy 
blows 

Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand. 

On crown or crosier, which shall inter- 
pose 

Between thee and the weal of Father- 
land. 



CHANNING 



223 



Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of 

all, 
Shake thou all German dreamland 

with the fall 
Of that accursed tree, whose evil 

trunk 
Was spared of old by Erfurt's stal- 
wart monk. 
Fight not with ghosts and shadows. 

Let us hear 
The snap of chain-links. Let our glad- 
dened ear 
Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as 

the light 
Follows thy axe-stroke, through his 

cell of night. 
Be faithful to both worlds; nor think 

to feed 
Earth's starving milhons with the 

husks of creed. 
Servant of Him whose mission high 

and holy 
Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, 

and the lowly. 
Thrust not his Eden promise from our 

sphere. 
Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's 

span; 
Like him of Patmos, see it, now and 

here, 
The New Jerusalem comes down to 

man! 
Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like 

him, 
When the roused Teuton dashes from 

his limb 
The rusted chain of ages, help to bind 
His hands for whom thou claim'st the 

freedom of the mind ! 



CHANNING 

Not vainly did old poets tell, 
Nor vainly did old genius paint 

God's great and crowning miracle, 
The hero and the saint ! 

For even in a faithless day 

Can we our sainted ones discern; 

And feel, while with them on the way, 
Our hearts within us burn. 

And thus the common tongue and pen 

Which, world-wide, echo Chan- 

ning's fame, '° 



As one of Heaven's anointed men, 
Have sanctified his name. 

In vain shall Rome her portals bar, 
And shut from him her saintly prize. 

Whom, in the world's great calendar. 
All men shall canonize. 

By Narragansett's sunny bay. 

Beneath his green embowering 
wood, 

To me it seems but yesterday 

Since at his side I stood. 20 

The slopes lay green w^ith summer 
rains, 
The western wind blew fresh and 
free. 
And glimmered down the orchard 
lanes 
The white surf of the sea. 

With us was one, who, calm and true. 
Life's highest purpose understood. 

And, like his blessed Master, knew 
The joy of doing good. 

Unlearned, "unknown to lettered fame, 
Yet on the lips of England's poor 30 

And toiling millions dwelt his name. 
With blessings evermore. 

Unknown to power or place, yet where 
The sun looks o'er the Caril) sea. 

It blended with the freeman's prayer 
And song of jubilee. 

He told of England's sin and wrong, 
The ills her suffering children know. 

The squalor of the city's throng. 
The green field's want and woe. 40 

O'er Channing's face the tenderness 
Of sympathetic sorrow stole. 

Like a still shadow, passionless, 
The sorrow of the soul. 

But when the generous Briton told 
How hearts were answering to his 
own. 

And freedom's rising murmur rolled 
Up to the dull-eared throne, 

I saw, methought, a glad surprise 
Thrill througli that frail and pain- 
worn frame, 5° 



224 



PERSONAL POEMS 



And, kindling in those deep, calm 
eves, 
A still and earnest flame. 

His few, brief words were such as 
move 
The human heart., — the Faith- 
sown seeds 
A\'hich ripen in the soil of love 
To high heroic deeds. 

No bars of sect or clime were felt, 
The Babel strife of tongues had 
ceased. 

And at one common altar knelt 
The (Quaker and the priest. 60 

And not in vain: with strength re- 
newed. 
And zeal refreshed, and hope less 
dim, 
For that brief meeting, each pursued 
The path allotted him. 

How echoes yet each Western hill 
And vale with Channing's dying 
word ! 

How are the hearts of freemen still 
By that great warning stirred! 

The stranger treads his native soil. 
And pleads, with zeal unfelt be- 
fore, 70 

The honest right of British toil, 
The claim of England's poor. 

Before him time-wTought barriers fall, 
( )ld fears subside, old hatreds melt. 

And, stretching o'er the sea's blue 
wall. 
The Saxon greets the Celt. 

The yeoman on the Scottish lines, 
The Sheffield grinder, worn and 
grim. 

The delver in the Cornwall mines. 
Look up with hope to him. 80 

Swart smiters of the glowing steel. 
Dark feeders of the forge's flame, 

Pale watchers at the loom and wheel. 
Repeat his honored name. 

And thus the influence of that hour 
Of converse on Rhode Island's 
strand 



Lives in the calm, resistless power 
Which moves our fatherland. 

God blesses still the generous thought, 

And still the fitting word He 

speeds, 90 

And Truth, at His requiring taught, 
He quickens into deeds. 

Where is the victory of the grave ? 

What dust upon the spirit lies ? 
God keeps the sacred life he gave, — 

The prophet never dies ! 



TO MY FRIEND ON THE 
DEATH OF HIS SISTER 

Thine is a grief, the depth of which 
another 
May never know; 
Yet, o'er the waters, O my stricken 
brother ! 
To thee I go. 

I lean my heart unto thee, sadly fold- 
ing 
Thy hand in mine; 
With even the weakness of my soul 
upholding 
The strength of thine. 

I never knew, like thee, jthe dear de- 
parted ; 
I stood not by 10 

When, in calm trust, the pure and 
tranquil-hearted 
Lay down to die. 

And on thy ears my words of weak 
condoling 
Must vainly fall: 
The funeral bell which in thy heart is 
tolling, 
Sounds over all ! 

I will not mock thee with the poor 
world's common 
And heartless phrase, 
Nor wrong the memory of a sainted 
woman 
With idle praise. 20 

With silence only as their benedic- 
tion, 
God's angels come 



TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER 225 




William EUery Channing 



Where, in the shadow of a great afflic- 
tion, 
The soul sits dumb ! 

Yet, would I say what thy own heart 
appro veth : 
Our Father's will, 
Calling to Him the dear one whom He 
loveth, 
Is mercy still. 

Not upon thee or thine the solemn 
angel 
Hath evil wrought: 30 

Her funeral anthem is a glad evan- 
gel,— 
The good die not ! 

God calls our loved ones, but we lose 
not wholly 
What He hath given; 



They live on earth, in thought and 
deed, as truly 
As in His heaven. 

And she is with thee; in thy path of 
trial 
She walketh yet; 
Still with the baptism of thy self- 
denial 
Her locks are wet. 40 

Up, then, my brother! Lo, the fields 
of harvest 
Lie white in view! 
She lives and loves thee, and the God 
thou servest 
To both is true. 

Thrust in thy sickle! England's toil- 
worn peasants 
Thy call abide; 



226 



PERSONAL POExMS 



And she tliovi mourn 'st, a pure and 
holy i>ros('nce, 
Sliall glran beside! 

DANIEL WHEELER 

Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society 
of Friends, wlm had lal)ored in the cause 
.if his Divine Master in Great Britain, 
Russia, and the islands of the Pacific, died 
in New York in the sjjring of 1840, while 
on a religious visit to this country. 

DEARLY loved ! 
And worthy of our love! No more 
Thy aged form shall rise before 
The hushed and waiting worshipper, 
In meek obedience utterance giving 
To words of truth, so fresh and living, 
That, even to the inward sense, 
Tiiey bore un<iuestioned evidence 
Of an anointed Messenger! 
Or, bowing down thy silver hair lo 
In reverent awfulness of prayer, 

The world, its time and sense, shut 
out, 
The brightness of Faith's holy trance 
Gathered upon thy countenance, 

As if each lingering cloud of doubt, 
Tlie cold, dark shadows resting here 
In Time's unluminous atmosphere, 

Were lifted by an angel's hand. 
And through them on thy spiritual eye 
Shone do\vn the l)lessedness on high, 20 

The glory of the Better Land 1 

The oak has fallen ! 
While, meet for no good work, the 

vine 
May yet its worthless branches twine. 
Who knoweth not that with thee fell 
A great man in our Israel ? 
Fallen, while thy loins were girded 
still. 

Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet. 

And in thy hand retaining yet 
The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell ! 30 
Unharmed and safe, where, wild and 
free. 

Across the Neva's cold morass 
The breezes from the Frozen Sea 

With winter's arrowy keenness pass; 
Or where tiie unwarning tropic gale 
Smote to the waves thy tattered sail. 
Or \yhere the noon-hour's fervid heat 
Against Tahiti's moimtains beat; 



The same mysterious Hand which 
gave 

Deliverance upon land and wave,4o 
Tempered for thee the blasts which 
blew 

Ladaga's frozen surface o'er. 
And blessed for thee the baleful dew 

Of evening upon Eimeo's shore, 
Beneatli this sunny heaven of ours. 
Midst our soft airs and opening flowers 

Hath given thee a grave ! 

His will be done, 
Who seeth not as man, whose way 
Is not as ours ! 'T is well with 
thee ! so 

Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay 
Disquieted thy closing day. 
But, evermore, thy soul could say, 
"My Father careth still for me!" 
Called from thy hearth and home, — 
from her, 
The last bud on thy household tree. 
The last dear one to minister 

In duty and in love to thee. 
From all which nature holdeth dear. 
Feeble with years and worn with 
pain, 60 

To seek our distant land again. 
Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing 
The things which should befall thee 

here. 
Whether for labor or for death, 
In childlike trust serenely going 
To that last trial of thy faith ! 

Oh, far away, 
Where never shines our Northern star 

On that dark waste whichBalboa saw 

From Darien's mountains stretching 

far, 70 

So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, 

that there. 
With forehead to its damp -wind bare. 

He bent his mailed knee in awe; 
In many an isle whose coral feet 
The surges of that ocean beat, 
In thy palm shadows, Oahu, 

And Honolulu's silver bay. 
Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue. 

And taro-plains of Tooboonai, 
Are gentle hearts, which long shall 
be 80 

Sad as our own at thought of thee, 
Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed. 
Whose souls in weariness and need 



TO FREDRIKA BREMER 



227 



Were strengthened and refreshed by 
thine. 

For blessed by our Father's hand 
Was thy deep love and tender care, 
Thy ministry and fervent prayer, — 

Grateful as Eshcol's clustered vine 

To Israel in a weary land ! 

And they who drew 90 

By thousands round thee, in the hour 

Of prayerful waiting, hushed and 

deep, 
That He who bade the islands keep 
Silence before Him, might renew 
Their strength with His unslumber- 
ing power. 
They too shall mourn that thou art 
gone, 
That nevermore thy aged lip 
Shall soothe the weak, the erring 

warn. 
Of those who first, rejoicing, heard 
Through thee the Gospel's glorious 
word, — 100 

Seals of thy true apostleship. 
And, if the brightest diadem. 

Whose gems of glory purely burn 
Around the ransomed ones in bliss, 
Be evermore reserved for them 

Who here, through toil and sorrow, 

turn 
Many to righteousness. 
May we not think of thee as wearing 
That star-like crown of light, and 

bearing, 
Amidst Heaven's white and blissful 
band, no 

Th' unfading palm-branch in thy hand ; 
And joining with a seraph's tongue 
In that new song the elders sung. 
Ascribing to its blessed Giver 
Thanksgiving, love, and praise for- 
ever ! 

Farewell ! 
And though the ways of Zion mourn 
When her strong ones are called away. 
Who like thyself have calmly borne 
The heat and burden of the day, 120 
Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleep- 

cth 
His ancient watch around us keepeth; 
Still, sent from His creating hand, 
New witnesses for Truth shall stand. 
New instruments to sound abroad 
The Gospel of a risen Lord; 



To gather to the fold once more 
The desolate and gone astray, 
The scattered of a cloudy day, 

And Zion's broken walls restore; 130 
And, through the travail and the toil 

Of true obedience, minister 
Beauty for ashes, and the oil 

Of joy for mourning, unto her ! 
So shall her holy bounds increase 
With walls of praise and gates of 

peace; 
So shall the Vine, which martyr tears 
And blood sustained in other y^ars. 

With fresher life be clothed upon'; 
And to the world in lieauty sliow 140 
Like the rose-plant of Jericho, 

And glorious as Lebanon ! 

TO FREDRIKA BREMER 

Seeress of the misty Norland, 
Daughter of the Vikings bold. 

Welcome to the sunny Vineland, 
Which thy fathers souglit of old ! 

Soft as flow of Silja's waters, 

When the moon of summer shines. 

Strong as Winter from his mountains 
Roaring through the sleeted pines. 

Heart and ear, we long have listened 
To thy saga, rune, and song; 

As a household joy and presence 
We have known and loved thee long. 

By the mansion's marble mantel, 
Round the log-walled cabin's hearth. 

Thy sweet thoughts and northern fan- 
cies 
Meet and mingle with our mirth. 

And o'er weary spirits keeping 

Sorrow's night-watch, long and still, 

Shine they like thy sun of sunmier 
Over midnight vale and hill. 

We alone to tliee are strangers, 
Thou our friend and teacher art; 

Come, and know us as we know thee; 
Let us meet thee heart to heart ! 

To our homes and household altars 
We, in turn, thy steps would lead. 

As thv loving hand lias led us 
O'er the threshold of the Swede. 



228 



PERSONAL POEMS 



TO AVI8 KEENE 

ON UEfKlVINi; A BASKET OF SEA- 
MOSSES 

Thanks for tliy gift 
( )f ocean flowers, 
I^rn where the golden drift 
Of the .shmt .sunsliine falls 
Down the f^reen, tremulous walls 
Of water, to the cool, still coral 

bowers. 
Where, under rainbows of perpetual 
showers, 
God's ,u;arilens of the deep 
His patient angels keep; 
Gladdening the dim, strange soli- 
tude lo 
With fairest forms and hues, and 

thus 
Forever teaching us 
The lesson which the many-colored 

skies, 
The flowers, and leaves, and painted 

l)utterflies, 
The deer's branched antlers, the gay 

bird that flings 
The tropic sunshine from its golden 

wings. 
The brightness of the human counte- 
nance. 
Its play of smiles, the magic of a 
glance, 
Forevermore repeat, 
In varied tones and sweet, 20 
That beauty, in and of itself, is 
good. 

O kind and generous friend, o'er 
whom 
The sunset hues of Time are cast, 
Painting, upon the overpast 
And scattered clouds of noonday 

sorrow, 
The promise of a fairer morrow, 
An earnest of the better life to come; 
The binding of the spirit broken. 
The warning to the erring spoken, 
Tiie comfort of the sad, 30 

The eye to see, the hand to cull 
Of common things the beautiful. 

The absent heart made glad 
By simple gift or graceful token 
Of love it needs as daily food. 
All own one Source, and all are 
good! 



Hence, tracking sunny cove and 

reach, 
Where spent waves glimmer up the 

beach. 
And toss their gifts of weed and shell 
From foamy curve and combing 

swell, 40 

No unbefitting task w^as thine 
To weave these flowers so soft and 

fair 
In unison with His design 

Who loveth beauty everywhere; 
And makes in every zone and clime 

In ocean and in upper air, 
" All things beautiful in their time." 

For not alone in tones of awe and 
power 
He speaks to man; 
The cloudy horror of the thunder- 
shower so 
His rainbows span; 
And where the caravan 
Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in 

air 
The crane-flock leaves, no trace of 
passage there. 
He gives the weary eye 
The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon 
hours, 
And on its branches dry 
Calls out the acacia's flowers; 
And where the dark shaft pierces 
down 
Beneath the mountain roots, 60 
Seen by the miner's lamp alone, 
The star-like crystal shoots; 
So, where, the winds and waves 

below, 
The coral-branched gardens grow, 
His climbing weeds and mosses 

show. 
Like foliage, on each stony bough, 
Of varied hues more strangely 

gay 
Than forest leaves in autumn's 
day; — 
Thus evermore, 
On sky, and wave, and shore, 
An all-pervading beauty seems to 
say: 71 

God's love and power are one; 

and they, 
Who, like the thunder of a sultry 
day. 
Smite to restore, 



THE HILL-TOP 



229 



And they, who, Uke the gentle wind, 

uphft 
The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and 
drift 
Their perfume on the air. 
Alike may serve Him, each, with their 
own gift. 
Making their lives a prayer ! 



THE HILL-TOP 

The burly driver at my side. 

We slowly climbed the hill. 
Whose summit, in the hot noontide, 

Seemed rising, rising still. 
At last, our short noon-shadows hid 

The top-stone, bare and brown, 
From whence, like Gizeli's pyramid, 

The rough mass slanted down. 

I felt the cool breath of the North; 

Between me and the sun, 10 

O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth, 

I saw the cloud-shades run. 
Before me, stretched for glistening 
miles. 

Lay mountain-girdled Squam; 
Like green -winged birds, the leafy 
isles 

Upon its bosom swam. 

And, glimmering through the sun-haze 
warm, 

Far as the eye could roam. 
Dark billows of an earthquake storm 

Beflecked with clouds like foam, 20 
Their vales in misty shadow deep. 

Their rugged peaks in shine, 
I saw the mountain ranges sweep 

The horizon's northern line. 

There towered Chocorua's peak; and 
west, 
Moosehillock's woods were seen. 
With many a nameless slide-scarred 
crest 
And pine-dark gorge between. 
Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed 
cloud, 
The great Notch mountains shone, 30 
Watched over by the solemn-browed 
And awful face of stone ! 

" A good look-off ! " the driver spake : 
" About this time last year, 



I drove a party to the Lake, 
And stopped, at evening, here. 

'T was duskish down below; but all 
These hills stood in the sun. 

Tilt, dipped behind yon purple wall, 
He left them, one by one. 40 

" A lady, who, from Thornton hill, 

Had held her place outside, 
And, as a pleasant woman will. 

Had cheered the long, dull ride. 
Besought me, with so sweet a smile, 

That — though I hate delays — 
I could not choose but rest awhile, — 

(These women have such ways !) 

" On yonder mossy ledge she sat. 

Her sketch upon her knees, so 

A stray brown lock beneath her 
hat 

Unrolling in the breeze; 
Her sweet face, in the sunset light 

Upraised and glorified, — 
I never saw a prettier sight 

In all my mountain ride. 

" As good as fair; it seemed her joy 

To comfort and to give; 
My poor, sick wife, and cripple 
boy, 

Will bless her while they live ! " 60 
The tremor in the driver's tone 

His manhood did not shame: 
"I dare say, sir, you may have 
known" — 

He named a well-known name. 

Then sank the pyramidal mounds. 

The blue lake fled away; 
For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds, 

A lighted hearth for day ! 
From lonely years and weary miles 

The shadows fell apart; 70 

Kind voices cheered, sweet human 
smiles 

Shone warm into my heart. 

We journeyed on; but earth and sky 

Had power to charm no more; 
Still dreamed my inward - turning 
eye 

The dream of memory o'er. 
Ah ! human kindness, human love, — 

To few who seek denied; 
Too late we learn to prize above 

The whole round world beside 1 80 



230 



PERSONAL POEMS 



ELLIOTT 

Hands off! thou tithe-fat plunderer! 
play 

No trick of priestcraft here! 
Back, puny lorclling! darest thou lay 

A hand "on l^Uiott's bier? 
Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust, 

Heneath his feet he trod: 
Hf kiK'w the locust swarm that cursed 

Tlie liarvest-helds of God. 

On these pale lips, the smothered 
thouj^ht 

Which ICniiland's millions feel, 10 
A fierce and fearful splendor caught, 

As from his forge the steel. 
Strong-armed as Thor, a shower of fire 

His smitten anvil flung; 
God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb 
Hunger's ire, 

He gave them all a tongue ! 

Then let the poor man's horny hands 

liear up tiie mighty dead, 
And lal)f)r's swart and stalwart bands 

Behind as mourners tread. 20 

Leave cant and craft their baptized 
bounds, 

Leave rank its minster floor; 
Give England's green and daisied 
grounds 

The poet of the poor ! 

Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge 

That l)rave old heart of oak, 
With fitting dirge from sounding 
forge, 

And pall of furnace smoke ! 
Where whirls the stone its dizzy 
rovmds. 

And axe and sledge are swung, 30 
And, timing to their stormy sounds. 

His stormy lays are sung. 

There lot the peasant's step be heard, 

The grinder chant his rhyme; 
Nor patron's praise nor dainty word 

Befits the man or time. 
No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh 

For him whose words were bread; 
The Himic rhyme and spell whereby 

The foodless poor were fed ! "40 

Pile up the tombs of rank and pride, 
O England, as thou wilt! 



With pomp to nameless worth denied, 

Emblazon titled guilt ! 
No part or lot in these we claim; 

liut, o'er the sounding wave, 
A common right to Elliott's name, 

A freehold in his grave ! 

ICHABOD 

So fallen! so lost! the light with- 
drawn 

Which once he wore ! I 

The glory from his gray hairs gone 

Forevermore ! 

Revile him not, the Tempter hath f 

A snare for all; 
And pitying tears, not scorn and 
wrath, : 

Befit his fall ! j 

Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 

When he who might 
Have lighted up and led his age, | 

Falls back in night. ' 

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to 
mark 

A bright soul driven, 
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, 

From hope and heaven ! 

Let not the land once proud of him 

Insult him now. 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, 

Dishonored brow. 

But let its humbled sons, instead. 

From sea to lake, 
A long lament, as for the dead, 

In sadness make. 

Of all w^e loved and honored, naught 

Save power remains; 
A fallen angel's pride of thought. 

Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone; from those great eyes 

The soul has fled: 
When faith is lost, when honor dies, 

The man is dead ! 

Then, pay the reverence of old days ' 

To his dead fame; 
Walk backward, wdth averted gaze. 

And hide the shame 1 



WORDSWORTH 



231 



THE LOST OCCASION 

Some die too late and some too soon, 
At early morning, heat of noon, 
Or the chill evening twilight. Thou, 
Whom the rich heavens did so endow 
With eyes of power and Jove's own 

brow, 
With all the massive strength that fills 
Thy home-horizon's granite hills, 
With rarest gifts of heart and head 
From manliest stock inlierited. 
New England's stateliest type of 

man, 10 

In port and speech Olympian* 
Whom no one met, at first, but took 
A second awed and wondering look 
(As turned, perchance, the eyes of 

Greece 
On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece) ; 
Whose words in simplest homespun 

clad, 
The Saxon strength of Caedmon's had. 
With power reserved at need to reach 
The Roman forum's loftiest speech. 
Sweet with persuasion, eloquent 20 
In passion, cool in argument. 
Or, ponderous, falhng on thy foes 
As fell the Norse god's hammer blows. 
Crushing as if with Talus' flail 
Through Error's logic-woven mail. 
And failing only when they tried 
The adamant of the righteous side, — 
Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved 
Of old friends, by the new deceived, 
Too soon for us, too soon for thee, 30 
Beside thy lonely Northern sea. 
Where long and low the marsh-lands 

spread. 
Laid wearily down thy august head. 

Thou shouldst have lived to feel below 
Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow; 
The late-sprung mine that underlaid 
Thy sad concessions vainly made. 
Thou shouldst have seen from Sum- 
ter's wall 
The star-flag of the Union fall. 
And armed rebellion pressing on 40 
The broken lines of Washington ! 
No stronger voice than thine had then 
Called out the utmost might of men. 
To make the Union's charter free 
And strengthen law by liberty. 
How had that stern arbitrament 
To thy gray age youth's vigor lent, 



Shaming ambition's paltry prize 
Before tliy disillusioned eyes; 
Breaking the spell about thee wound 
Like the green withes that Samson 
bound; 51 

Redeeming in one effort grand, 
Thyself and thy imperilled land ! 
Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, 
O sleeper by the Northern sea. 
The gates of opportunity ! 
God fills the gaps of human need, 
Each crisis brings its word and deed. 
Wise men and strong we did not lack; 
But still, with memory turning back, 60 
In the dark hours we thought of thee, 
And thy lone grave beside the sea. 

Above that grave the east winds blow, 
And from the marsh-lands drifting 

slow 
The sea-fog comes, with evermore 
The wave-wash of a lonely shore, 
And sea-bird's melancholy cry, 
As Nature fain would typify 
The sadness of a closing scene, 
The loss of that which should have 

been. 70 

But, where thy native mountains bare 
Their foreheads to diviner air. 
Fit emblem of enduring fame. 
One lofty summit keeps thy name. 
For thee the cosmic forces did 
The rearing of that pyramid, 
The prescient ages shaping with 
Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. 
Sunrise and sunset lay thereon 
With hands of light their benison, 80 
The stars of midnight pause to set 
Their jewels in its coronet. 
And evermore that mountain mass 
Seems climbing from the shadowy 

pass 
To light, as if to manifest 
Thy nobler self, thy life at best ! 

WORDSWORTH 

\\rRiTTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS 
MEMOIRS 

Dear friends, who read the world 
aright, 

And in its common forms discern 
A beauty and a harmony 

The many never learn! 



232 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Kindred in soul of him who found 
In simple flower and leaf and stone 

The impulse of the sweetest lays 
Our Saxon tongue lias known, — 

Accept this record of a life 

As sweet and pure, as calm and 
f^ood, 
As a long day of blandest June 

In green field and in wood- 
How welcome to our ears, long pained 

By strife of sect and party noise, 
The'l)rook-like murmur of his song 

Of nature's simple joys ! 

The violet bv its mossy stone, 
The })rimrose by the river's brim, 

And chance-sown daffodil, have found 
Innnortal life through him. 

The sunrise on his breezy lake, 
The rosv tints his sunset brought, 

World-seen, are gladdening all t'he 
vales 
And mountain-peaks of thought. 

Art builds on sand; the works of pride 
And human passion change and fall; 

But that which shares the life of God 
With Him surviveth all. 



TO 



lines written after a summer 
day's excursion 

Fair Nature's priestesses ! to whom, 
In hieroglyph of bud and bloom, 

Her mysteries are told; 
Who, wise in lore of wood and mead. 
The seasons' pictured scrolls can read. 

In lessons manifold ! 

Thanks for the courtesy, and gay 
(lood-huinor, which on Wasliing Day 

Our ill-timed visit bore; 
Thanks for your graceful oars, which 

broke 
The morning dreams of Artichoke, 

Along his wooded shore ! 

Varied as varying Nature's ways, 
Sprites of the river, woodland fays, 
Or mountain nymphs, ye seem; 



Free-limbed Dianas on the green, 
Loch Katrine's ICllen, or Undine, 
Upon your favorite stream. 

The forms of which the poets told, 
The fair benignities of old. 

Were doubtless such as you; 
What more than Artichoke the rill 
Of Helicon ? Than Pipe-stave hill 

Arcadia's mountain-view ? 

No sweeter bowers the bee delayed. 
In wild Hymettus' scented shade, 

Than those you dwell among; 
Snow-flowered azaleas, intertwined 
With roses, over banks inclined 

With trembling harebells hung! 

A charmed life unknown to death, 
Immortal freshness Nature hath; 

Her fabled fount and glen 
Are now and here: Dodona's shrine 
Still murmurs in the wind-swept 
pine, — 

All is that e'er hath been. 

The Beauty which old Greece or Rome 
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at 
home; 

We need but eye and ear 
In all our daily walks to trace 
The outlines of incarnate grace. 

The hymns of gods to hear ! 



IN PEACE 

A TRACK of moonlight on a quiet 
lake. 
Whose small waves on a silver- 
sanded shore 

Whisper of peace, and with the low 
winds make 

Such harmonies as keep the woods 
awake. 

And listening all night long for their 
sweet sake; 
A green-waved slope of meadow, 
hovered o'er 

By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light 

On viewless stems, with folded wings 
of white; 

A slumberous stretch of mountain- 
land, far seen 

W^here the low westering day, with 
gold and green, 



BENEDICITE 



233 



Purple and amber, softly blended, fills 
The wooded vales, and^ melts among 

the hills; 
A vine-fringed river, winding to its 

rest 
On the calm bosom of a stormless 

sea, 
Bearing alike upon its placid breast, 
With earthly flowers and heavenly 

stars impressed, 
The hues of time and of eternity: 
Such are the pictures which the 

thought of thee, 
O friend, awakeneth, — charming the 

keen pain 
Of thy departure, and our sense of 

loss 
Requiting with the fullness of thy 

gain. 
Lo! on the quiet grave thy life- 
borne cross. 
Dropped only at its side, methinks 

doth shine. 
Of thy beatitude the radiant sign ! 
No sob of grief, no wild lament be 

there. 
To break the Sabbath of the holy 

air; 
But, in their stead, the silent-breath- 
ing prayer 
Of hearts still waiting for a rest like 

thine, 
O spirit redeemed ! Forgive us, if 

henceforth, 
With sweet and pure similitudes of 

earth, 
We keep thy pleasant memory 

freshly green. 
Of love's inheritance a priceless part, 
Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, 

is seen 
To paint, forgetful of the tricks of 

art, 
With pencil dipped alone in colors 

of the heart. 



BENEDICITE 

God's love and peace be with thee, 

where 
Soe'er this soft autumnal air 
Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair ! 



Whether through 
comes 



city casements 



Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms, 
Or, out among the woodland blooms. 
It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face, ' 
Imparting, in its glad embrace, 
Beauty to beauty, grace to grace! 

Fair Nature's book together read, 
The old wood-paths that knew our 

tread. 
The maple shadows overhead, — 

The hills we climbed, the river seen 
By gleams along its deep ravine, — 
All keep thy memory fresh and green. 

Where'er I look, where'er I stray. 
Thy thought goes with me on my 

way. 
And hence the prayer I breathe to 

day; 

O'er lapse of time and change of scene, 
The weary waste which lies between 
Thyself and me, my heart I lean. 

Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell- 
word, nor 
The half-unconscious power to draw 
All hearts to thine by Love's sweet 
law. 

With these good gifts of God is cast 
Thy lot, and many a charm tiiou 

hast 
To hold the blessed angels fast. 

If, then, a fervent wish for thee 
The gracious heavens will heed from 

me, 
What should, dear heart, its burden 

be? 

The sighing of a shaken reed, — 
What can I more than meekly plead 
The greatness of our common need ? 

God's love, — unchanging, pure, and 

true, — 
The Paraclete white-shining through 
His peace, — the fall of Hermon's 

dew! 

With such a prayer, on this sweet 

day, 
As thou mayst hear and I may say, 
I greet thee, dearest, far away ! 



234 



PERSONAL POEMS 



KOSSUTH 

Type of two mighty continents! — 
combining 
The strength of Europe with the 
warmth and glow 

Of Asian song and j)rophecy, — the 
shining 
Of Orient splendors over Northern 
snow ! 

Who shall receive him? Who, un- 
hlushing, speak 

Welcome to him, who, while he strove 
to break 

The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, 
smote ofT 

A 1 1 h e sa me 1 )lo w the fetters of the serf, 

Rearing the altar of his Fatherland 
On the firm base of freedom, and 
thereby 

Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless 
hand. 
Mocked not the God of Justice with 
a lie ! 

Who shall be Freedom's mouthpiece ? 
Who shall give 

Her welcoming cheer to the great fugi- 
tive ? 

Not he who, all her sacred trusts be- 
traying, 
Is scourging back to slavery's hell of 

pain 
The swarthy Kossuths of our land 
again ! 

Not he whose utterance now from lips 
designed 

The bugle-march of Liberty to wind, 

And call her hosts beneath the break- 
ing light, 

The keen reveille of her morn of fight. 
Is but the hoarse note of the blood- 
hoimd's baying. 

The wolf's long howl behind the bond- 
man's flight ! 

Oh for the tongue of him who lies at 
rest 
In (^uincy's shade of patrimonial 
trees. 

Last of the Puritan tribunes and the 
best, 
To Icncj a voice to Freedom's sympa- 
thies, 

And hail the coming of the noblest 
guest 

The Old World's wrong has given the 
New World of the West 1 



TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER 

AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER 
OF HORACE 

Old friend, kind friend ! lightly down 
Drop time's snow-flakes on thy crown! 
Never be thy shadow less, 
Never fail thy cheerfulness; 
Care, that kills the cat, may plough 
Wrinkles in the miser's brow, 
Deepen envy's spiteful frown. 
Draw the mouths of bigots down. 
Plague ambition's dream, and sit 
Heavy on the hypocrite, lo 

Haunt the rich man's door, and ride 
In the gilded coach of pride; — 
Let the fiend pass ! — what can he 
Find to do with such as thee ? 
Seldom comes that evil guest 
Where the conscience lies at rest, 
And brown health and quiet wit 
Smiling on the threshold sit, 

I, the urchin unto whom, 
In that smoked and dingy room, 20 
Where the district gave thee rule 
O'er its ragged winter school. 
Thou didst teach the mysteries 
Of those weary A B C's, — 
Where, to fill the every pause 
Of thy wise and learned saws. 
Through the cracked and crazy wall 
Came the cradle-rock and squall. 
And the goodman's voice, at strife 
With his shrill and tipsy wife, — 30 
Luring us by stories old. 
With a comic unction told, 
More than by the eloquence 
Of terse birchen arguments 
(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look 
With complacence on a book ! — 
W^here the genial pedagogue 
Half forgot his rogues to flog, 
Citing tale or apologue. 
Wise and merry in its drift 40 

As was Plupdrus' twofold gift. 
Had the little rebels known it, 
Risum et prudentiam monet ! 
I, — the man of middle years, 
In whose sable locks appears 
Many a warning fleck of gray, — 
Looking back to that far day, 
And thy primal lessons, feel 
Grateful smiles my lips unseal. 
As, remembering thee, I blend 50 



TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER 



235 




Kossuth 



Olden teacher, present friend, 
Wise with antiquarian search, 
In the scrolls of State and Church: 
Named on history's title-page. 
Parish-clerk and justice sage; 
For the ferule's wholesome awe 
Wielding now the sword of law. 
Threshing Time's neglected sheaves, 
Gathering up the scattered leaves 
Which the wrinkled sibyl cast 60 

Careless from her as she passed, — 
Twofold citizen art thou. 
Freeman of the past and now. 
He who bore thy name of old 
Midway in the heavens did hold 
Over Gibeon moon and sun; 
Thou hast bidden them backward 

run; 
Of to-day the present ray 
Flinging over yesterday ! 



Let the busy ones deride 70 

What I deem of right thy pride: 
Let tlie fools their treadmills grind, 
Look not forward nor l)ohind, 
Shuffle in and wriggle out. 
Veer with every breeze about, 
Turning like a windmill sail 
Or a dog that seeks his tail; 
Let them laugh to see thee fast 
Tabernacled in the Past, 
Working out witli eye and lip 80 

Riddles of old penmanship. 
Patient as Belzoni there 
Sorting out, with loving care, 
Mummies of dead (juestions stripped 
From their sevenfold manuscript ! 

Dabbling, in their noisy way, 
In the puddles of to-day, 
Little know they of that vast 



236 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Solemn ocean of the past, 
On whose margin, wreck-bespread, 90 
Thou art waUvUig with tlie dead. 
Questioning the stranded years, 
Waking smiles by turns, and 

tears, 
As tliou callest up again 
Sliapes the dust has long o'erlain, — 
Fair-haired woman, bearded man, 
Cavalier and Puritan; 
In an age whose eager view 
Seeks but present things, and new. 
Mad for party, sect and gold, 100 

Teaching reverence for the old. 

On that shore, with fowler's tact. 
Coolly bagging fact on fact. 
Naught amiss to thee can float, 
Tale, or song, or anecdote; 
Village gossip, centuries old. 
Scandals by our grandams told. 
What the pilgrim's table spread, 
Wliere he lived, and whom he wed, 
Long-drawn bill of w'ine and beer no 
For his ordination cheer, 
Or tiie flip that wellnigh made 
Glad his funeral cavalcade; 
Weary prose, and poet's lines. 
Flavored by their age, like wines, 
Eulogistic of some quaint, 
I)oul)tful, Puritanic saint; 
Lays tliat quickened husking jigs. 
Jests that shook grave periwigs. 
When the parson had his jokes 120 
And his glass, like other folks; 
Sermons tiiat, for mortal hours. 
Taxed our fathers' vital powers. 
As the long nineteenthlies poured 
Downward from the sounding-board. 
And, for fire of Pentecost, 
Touched their beards December's 
frost. 

Time is hastening on, and we 
What our fathers are shall be, — 
Shadow-shapes of memory ! 130 

Joined to that vast multitude 
Where the great are but the good. 
And the mind of strength shall prove 
Weaker than the heart of love; 
Pride of graybeard wisdom less 
Than the inifant's guilelessness, 
And his song of sorrow more 
Than the crown the Psalmist wore! 
Who shall then, with pious zeal, 
At our moss-grown thresholds kneel, 



From a stained and stony page 141 
Reading to a careless age, 
With a patient eye like thine, 
Prosing tale and limping line, 
Names and words the hoary rime • 
Of the Past has made sublime ? 
Who shall work for us as well 
The antiquarian's miracle ? 
Who to seeming life recall 
Teacher grave and pupil small ? 150 
Who shall give to thee and me 
Freeholds in futurity ? 

Well, whatever lot be mine, 
Long and happy days be thine, 
Ere thy full and honored age 
Dates of time its latest page ! 
Squire for master. State for school, 
W^isely lenient, live and rule; 
Over grown-up knave and rogue 
Play tlie watchful pedagogue; 160 

Or, while pleasure smiles on duty. 
At the call of youth and beauty, 
Speak for them the spell of law 
Which shall bar and bolt withdraw. 
And the flaming sword remove 
From the Paradise of Love. 
Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore 
Ancient tome and record o'er; 
Still thy week-day lyrics croon. 
Pitch in church the Sunday tune, 170 
Showing something, in thy part. 
Of the old Puritanic art. 
Singer after Sternhold's heart ! 
In thy pew, for many a year, 
Homilies from Oldbug hear. 
Who to wit like that of South, 
And the Syrian's golden mouth. 
Doth the homely pathos add 
Which the pilgrim preachers had; 
Breaking, like a child at play 180 

Gilded idols of the day, 
Cant of knave and pomp of fool 
Tossing with his ridicule, 
Yet, in earnest or in jest, 
Ever keeping truth abreast. 
And, when thou art called, at last. 
To thy townsmen of the past, 
Not as stranger shalt thou come; 
Thou shalt find thyself at home 
With the httle and the big, 190 

Woollen cap and periwig, 
Madam in her high-laced rufT, 
Goody in her home-made stuff, — 
Wise and simple, rich and poor, 
Thou hast known them all before 1 



THE HERO 



237 



THE CROSS 



Richard Dillingham, a young member of 
the Society of Friends, died in the Nash- 
ville penitentiary, where he was conhned 
for aiding the escape of fugitive slaves. 

" The cross, if rightly borne, shall be 
No burden, but support to thee;" 
So, moved of old time for our sake, 
The holy monk of Kempen spake. 

Thou brave and true one! upon 

whom 
Was laid the cross of martyrdom. 
How didst thou, in thy generous 

youth, 
Bear witness to this blessed truth ! 

Thy cross of suffering and of shame 
A staff within thy hands became. 
In paths where faith alone could see 
The Master's steps supporting thee. 

Thine was the seed-time; God alone 
Beholds the end of what is sown; 
Beyond our vision, weak and dim, 
The harvest-time is hid with Him. 

Yet, unforgotten where it lies, 
That seed of generous sacrifice, 
Though seeming on the desert cast, 
Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last. 



THE HERO 

" Oh for a knight like Bayard, 
Without reproach or fear; 

My light glove on his casque of steel. 
My love-knot on his spear ! 

" Oh for the white plume floating 
Sad Zutphen's field above, — 

The lion heart in battle, 
The woman's heart in love ! 

" Oh that man once more were manly, 
Woman's pride, and not her scorn: 

That once more the pale young 
mother 1 1 

Dared to boast, 'a, man is born ' ! 

" But now life's slumberous current 
No sun-bowed cascade wakes; 

No tall, heroic manhood 
The level dulness breaks. 



"Oh for a knight like Bayard, 
Without reproach or fear ! 

My light glove on his casque of steel. 
My love-knot on his spear ! " U 

Then I said, my own heart throbbing 
To the time her proud pulse beat, 

" Life hath its regal natures yet, 
True, tender, brave, and sweet ! 

" Smile not, fair unbeHever ! 

One man, at least, I know, 
Who might wear the crest of Bayard 

Or Sidney's plume of snow. 

" Once, when over purple mountains 
Died away the Grecian sun, 30 

And the far Cyllenian ranges 

Paled and darkened, one by one, — 

"Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder, 

Cleaving all the quiet sky, 
And against his sharp steel liglitnings 

Stood the Suliote but to die. 

" Woe for the weak and lialting ! 

The crescent blazed behind 
A curving line of sabres, 

Like fire before tlie wind ! 40 

" Last to fly, and first to rally. 

Rode he of whom I speak, 
When, groaning in his bridle-path, 

Sank down a wounded Greek. 

" With the rich Albanian costume 
Wet with many a ghastly stain, 

Gazing on earth and sky as one 
Who might not gaze again ! 

" He looked forward to the mountains. 
Back on foes that never spare, so 

Then flung him from his saddle. 
And placed the stranger tliere. 

"'Allah! hu!' Through flashing 
sabres. 

Through a stormy hail of lead, 
The good Thessalian charger 

Up the slopes of olives sped. 

"Hot spurred the turbaned riders; 

He almost felt their breath, 
Where a mountain stream rolled 
darkly dovm 

Between the hills and death. 60 



238 



PERSONAL POEMS 




Samuel Gridley Howe (The Hero) 



" One brave and manful struggle, — 

He gained the solid land, 
And the cover of the mountains. 

And the carbines of his band!" 

" It was very great and noble," 
Said the moist-eyed listener then, 

"But one brave deed makes no hero; 
Tell me what lie since hath l)een !" 

"Still a brave and generous manhood, 
Still an honor without stain, 70 

In the prison of the Kaiser, 
I^y the barricades of Seine. 

"But dream not helm and harness 

The sign of valor true; 
Peace hath higher tests of manhood 

Than l)attle ever knew. 

" Wouldstknowhim now? Beholdhim, 
The Cadmus of the blind, 



Giving the dumb lip language, 
The idiot-clay a mind. 



80 



" Walking his round of duty 

Serenely day by day. 
With the strong man's hand of labor 

And childhood's heart of play, 

" True as the knights of story, 
Sir Lancelot and his peers, 

Brave in his calm endurance 
As they in tilt of spears. 



" As waves in stillest waters, 
As stars in noonday skies. 

All that wakes to noble action 
In his noon of calmness lies. 

" Wherever outraged Nature 
Asks w^ord or action brave, 

Wherever struggles labor, 
Wherever groans a slave, — 



90 



RANTOUL 



239 



" Wherever rise the peoples, 

Wherever sinks a throne, 
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds 

An answer in his own. 100 

" Knight of a better era, 
Without reproach or fear ! 

Said I not well that Bayards 
And Sidneys still are here?" 



RANTOUL 

One day, along the electric wire 
His manly word for Freedom sped; 

We came next morn: that tongue of 
fire 
Said only, " He who spake is dead ! " 

Dead ! while his voice was living yet, 
In echoes round the pillared dome ! 

Dead ! while his blotted page lay wet 
With themes of state and loves of 
home ! 

Dead ! in that crowning grace of time, 
That triumph of life's zenith hour ! 10 
Dead ! while we watched his man- 
hood's prime 
Break from the slow bud into 
flower ! 

Dead! he so great, and strong, and wise. 

While the mean thousands yet drew 

breath; 

How deepened, through that dread 

surprise. 

The mystery and the awe of death ! 

From the high place whereon our votes 
Had borne him, clear, calm, earnest, 
fell 

His first words, like the prelude notes 
Of some great anthem yet to swell. 20 

We seemed to see our flag unfurled. 
Our champion waiting in his place 

For the last battle of the world, 
The Armageddon of the race. 

Through him we hoped to speak the 
word 
Which wins the freedom of a land; 
And lift, for human right, the sword 
Which dropped from Hampden's 
dying hand. 



For he had sat at Sidney's feet, 
And walked with Pym and Vane 
apart; 30 

And, through the centuries, felt the 
beat 
Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's 
heart. 

He knew the paths the worthies held. 
Where England's best and wisest 
trod; 
And, lingering, drank the springs that 
welled 
Beneath the touch of Milton's rod. 

No wild enthusiast of the right, 
Self-poised and clear, he showed 
alway 

The coolness of his northern night, 
The ripe repose of autumn's day. 40 

His steps were slow, yet forward still 
He pressed where others paused or 
failed; 
The calm star clomb witii constant 
will. 
The restless meteor flashed and 
paled ! 

Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew 
And owned the higher ends of Law; 

Still rose majestic on his view 

The awful Shape the schoolman saw. 

Her home the heart of God; her voice 
The choral harmonies wherei)y so 

The stars, tlirough all their spheres, re- 
joice. 
The rhythmic rule of earth and sky ! 

We saw his great powers misapplied 
To poor ambitions; yet, through 
all. 
We saw him take the weaker side, 
And right the wronged, and free the 
thrall. 

Now, looking o'er the frozen North, 
For one like him in word and act. 

To call her old, free spirit forth, so 
And give her faith the life of fact, — 

To break her party bonds of shame, 
And labor with the zeal of him 

To make the Democratic name 
Of Liberty the synonyme, — 



240 



PERSONAL POEMS 



We sweep the land from hill to strand, 
We seek the strong, the wise, tlu^ 
brave. 

And. sad of heart, return to stand 
In silence 1)V a new-made ^rave ! 

There, where his breezy hills of home 
Look out upon his sail-white seas, 70 

The sounds of winds and waters come, 
And shape themselves to words like 
these : 

" Why, murmuring, mourn that he, 
whose power 

Was lent to Party over-long. 
Heard the still whisper at the hour 

He set his foot on Party wrong ? 

" The human life that closed so well 
No lapse of folly now can stain: 

The lips whence Freedom's protest fell 
No meaner thought can now pro- 
fane. 80 

" Mightier than living voice his grave 

That lofty protest utters o'er; 
Through roaring wind and smiting 
wave 
It speaks his hate of wrong once 
more. 

" Men of the North ! your weak regret 
Is wasted here; arise and pay 

To freedom and to him your debt, 
By following where he led the way ! " 



WILLIAM FORSTER 

The years are many since his hand 

Was laid upon my head, 
Too weak and young to understand 

The serious words he said. 

Yet often now the good man's look 

Before me seems to swim, 
As if some inward feeling took 

The outward guise of him. 

As if, in passion's heated war, 

Or near temptation's charm, 10 

Through him the low-voiced monitor 
Forewarned me of the harm. 

Stranger and pilgrim ! from that day 
Of meeting, first and last, 



Wherever Duty's pathway lay, 
His reverent steps have passed. 

The poor to feed, the lost to seek, 

To proffer life to death, 
Hope to the erring, — to the weak 

The strength of his own faith. 20 

To plead the captive's right; remove 
The sting of hate from Law; 

And soften in the fire of love 
The hardened steel of War. 

He walked the dark world in the 
mild. 

Still guidance of the Light; 
In tearful tenderness a child, 

A strong man in the right. 

From what great perils, on his way, 
He found, in prayer, release; 30 

Through what abysmal shadows lay 
His pathway unto peace, 

God knoweth; we could only see 
The tranquil strength he gained; 

The bondage lost in liberty, 
The fear in love unfeigned. 

And I, — my youthful fancies grown 

The habit of the man, 
Whose field of life by angels sown 

The wilding vines o'erran, — 40 

Low bowed in silent gratitude, 
My manhood's heart enjoys 

That reverence for the pure and good 
Which blessed the dreaming boy's. 

Still shines the light of lioly lives 
Like star-beams over doubt; 

Each sainted memory. Christlike, 
drives 
Some dark possession out. 



O friend ! O brother ! not in vain 
Thy life so calm and true, 

The silver dropping of the rain, 
The fall of summer dew ! 



so 



How many burdened hearts have 
prayed 
Their lives like thine might be ! 
But more shall pray henceforth for 
aid 
To lay them down like thee. 



BURNS 



241 



With weary hand, yet steadfast will, 

In old age as in youth, 
Thy Master found thee sowing still 

The good seed of His truth. 60 

As on thy task-field closed the day 

In golden-skied decline. 
His angel met thee on the way, 

And lent his arm to thine. 

Thy latest care for man, — thy last 
Of earthly thought a prayer, — 

Oh, who thy mantle, backward cast. 
Is worthy now to wear ? 

Methinks the mound which marks thy 
bed 

Might bless our land and save, 70 
As rose, of old, to life the dead 

Who touched the prophet's grave! 

TO CHARLES SUMNER 

If I have seemed more prompt to cen- 
sure wrong 
Than praise the right; if seldom to 

thine ear 
My voice hath mingled with the ex- 
ultant cheer 

Borne upon all our Northern winds 
along; 

If I have failed to join the fickle throng 

In wide-eyed wonder, that thou stand- 
est strong 

In victory, surprised in thee to find 

Brougham's scathing power with Can- 
ning's grace combined; 

That he, for whom the ninefold Muses 
sang. 

From their twined arms a giant ath- 
lete sprang, 1° 

Barbing the arrows of his native tongue 

With the spent shafts Latona's archer 
flung. 

To smite the Python of our land and 
time, 

Fell as the monster born of Crissa's 
slime, 

Like the blind bard who in Castalian 
springs 

Tempered the steel that clove the 
crest of kings, 

And on the shrine of England's free- 
dom laid 

The gifts of Cumse and of Delphi's 
shade, — 



Small need hast thou of words of 

praise from me. 

Thou knowest my heart, dear 

friend, and well canst guess 20 

That, even though silent, I have not 

the less 

Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree 

With the large future which I shaped 
for thee. 

When, years ago, beside the summer 
sea. 

White in the moon, we saw the long 
waves fall 

Baffled and broken from the rocky 
wall, 

That, to the menace of the brawling 
flood. 

Opposed alone its massive quietude, 

Calm as a fate; with not a leaf nor 
vine 

Nor birch-spray trembling in the still 
moonshine, 30 

Crowning it like God's peace, I some- 
times think 
That night-scene by the sea pro- 
phetical 

(For Nature speaks in symbols and in 
signs, 

And through her pictures human fate 
divines). 

That rock, wherefrom we saw the bil- 
lows sink 
In murmuring rout, uprising clear 
and tall 

In the white light of heaven, the type 
of one 

Who, momently by Error's host as- 
sailed, 

Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of 
granite mailed; 
And, tranquil-fronted, listening over 
all 40 

The tumult, hears the angels say, 
Well done ! 



BURNS 

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER 
IN BLOSSOM 

No more these simple flowers be- 
long 

To Scottisli maid and lover; 
Sown in the common soil of song, 

They bloom the wide world over. 



242 



PERSONAL POEMS 



In smiles and tears, in sun and show- 
ers, 

The minstrel and the heather, 
The deatiiless singer and the flowers 

He sang of live together. 

Wild iicathor-hells and Robert Burns ! 

The moorland flower and peasant !io 
How, at their mention, memory turns 

Her pages old and pleasant ! 

The gray sky wears again its gold 

And purple of adorning. 
And I nan hood's noonday shadows hold 

The dews of boyhood's morning. 

The dews that washed the dust and 
soil 
From off the wings of pleasure, 
The sky, that flecked the ground of 
toil 
With golden threads of leisure. 20 

I call to mind the summer day, 
The early harvest mowing. 

The sky with sun and clouds at 
play, 
And flowers with breezes blowing. 

I hear the blackbird in the corn. 

The locust in the haying; 
And, like the fabled hunter's horn, 

Old tunes my heart is playing. 

How oft that day, with fond delay, 
I sought the maple's shadow, 30 

And sang witli Burns the hours away, 
Forgetful of the meadow ! 

Bees hummed, birds twittered, over- 
head 

I heard the squirrels leaping. 
The good dog listened while I read, 

And wagged his tail in keeping. 

I watched him while in sportive mood 
I road " The Twn Dogs'" story, 

And half believed he understood 
The poet's allegory. 40 

Sweet day, sweet songs ! The golden 
hours 
Grew brighter for that singing. 
From brook and bird and meadow 
flowers 
A dearer welcome bringing. 



New 



home-seen Nature 



light on 
beamed. 
New glory over Woman; 
And daily life and duty seemed 
No longer poor and common. 

I woke to find the simple truth 

Of fact and feeling better so 

Than all the dreams that held my 
youth 
A still repining debtor: 

That Nature gives her handmaid. Art, 
The themes of sweet discoursing; 

The tender idyls of the heart 
In every tongue rehearsing. 

W^hy dream of lands of gold and pearl, 
Of loving knight and lady, 

W^hen farmer boy and barefoot girl 
Were wandering there already ? 60 

I saw through all familiar things 

The romance underlying; 
The joys and griefs that plume the 
wings 

Of Fancy skyward flying. 

I saw the same blithe day return, 
The same sweet fall of even, 

That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, 
And sank on crystal Devon. 

I matched with Scotland's heathery 
hills 

The sweetbrier and the clover; 70 
W-'ith Ayr and Doon, my native rills, 

Their wood hymns chanting over. 

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, 

I saw the Man uprising; 
No longer common or unclean, 

The child of God's baptizing ! 

With clearer eyes I saw the worth 

Of life among the lowly; 
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth 

Had made my own. more holy. 80 

And if at times an evil strain, 

To lawless love appealing, 
Broke in upon the sweet refrain 

Of pure and healthful feeling, 

It died upon the eye and ear, 
No inward answer gaining; 



TO JAMES T. FIELDS 



243 



No heart had I to see or hear 
The discord and the staining. 

Let those who never erred forget 
His worth, in vain bewailings; 90 

Sweet Soul of Song! I own mv 
debt 
Uncancelled by his failings ! 

Lament who will the ribald line 
Which tells his lapse from duty, 

How kissed the maddening lips of 
wine 
Or wanton ones of beauty; 

But think, while falls that shade be- 
tween 

The erring one and Heaven, 
That he who loved like Magdalen, 

Like her may be forgiven. 100 

Not his the song whose thunderous 
chime 
Eternal echoes render; 
The mournful Tuscan's haunted 
rhyme, 
And Milton's starry splendor ! 

But who his human heart has laid 
To Nature's bosom nearer ? 

Who sweetened toil like him, or 
paid 
To love a tribute dearer ? 

Through all his tuneful art, how 
strong 

The human feeling gushes ! no 

The very moonlight of his song 

Is warm with smiles and blushes ! 

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, 
So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; 

Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme. 
But spare his Highland Mary ! 



TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER 

So spake Esaias: so, in words of 

flame, 
Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with 

blame 
The traffickers in men, and put to 

shame. 
All earth and heaven before, 
The sacerdotal robbers of the poor. 



All the dread Scripture lives for thee 

again. 
To smite like lightning on the hands 

profane 
Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the 

chain. 
Once more the old Hebrew tongue 
Bends with the shafts of God a bow 

new-strung ! 

Take up the mantle which the pro- 
phets wore; 

Warn with their warnings, show the 
Christ once more 

Bound, scourged, and crucified in His 
blameless poor; 
And shake above our land 

The unquenched bolts that blazed in 
Hosea's hand ! 

Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our 
years 

The solemn burdens of the Orient 
seers. 

And smite with truth a guilty nation's 
ears. 
Mightier was Luther's word 

Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hut- 
ton's sword ! 



TO JAMES T. FIELDS 

ON A BLANK LEAF OF " POEMS 
PRINTED, NOT PUBLISHED " 

Well thought ! who would not rather 
hear 
The songs to Love and Friendship 

sung 
Than those which move the stran- 
ger's tongue, 
And feed his unselected ear ? 

Our social joys are more tlian fame; 

Life withers in the pul)lic look. 

Why mount tlie pillory of a book. 
Or barter coinfort for a name ? 

Who in a liouse of glass would dwell. 
With curious eyes at every pane ? 10 
To ring him in and out again, 

Who wants the public crier's bell ? 

To see the angel in one's way, 

Who wants to play the ass's part, — 



244 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Beur on his hack the wizard Art, 
And in liis service speak or hray ? 

And who iiis manly locks would shave, 
And^'qucnch the eyes of common 

sense, 
To share the noisy recompense 
That mocked the shorn and blinded 
slave ? 20 

The heart has needs beyond tlic head. 
And, starving in the plenitude 
Of strange gifts, craves its common 
food, — 

Our human nature's daily bread. 

We are but men: no gods are we, 
To sit in mid-heaven, cold and 

bleak, 
Each separate, on his painful peak. 

Thin-cloaked in self-complacency ! 

Better his lot whose axe is swung 
In Wartburg's woods, or that poor 
girl's 30 

Who by the Ilm her spindle whirls 

And sings the songs that Luther sung. 

Than his wlio, old, and cold, and vain, 
At Weimar sat, a demigod, 
And l)owed witli Jove's imperial nod 

His votaries in and out again ! 

Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet! 

Ambition, hew thy rocky stair! 

Who envies him who feeds on air 
The icy splendor of his seat ? 40 

I see your Alps, above me, cut 

The dark, cold sky; and dim and 

lone 
T see ye sitting, — stone on stone, — ■ 

With human senses dulled and shut. 

I could not reach you, if I would, 
Nor sit among your cloudy shapes; 
And (spare the fable of the grapes 

And fox) I would not if I could. 

Keen to your lofty pedestals ! 
The safer plain below I choose: 50 
Who never wins can rarely lose. 

Who never climbs Jis rarely "falls. 

Let such as love tiie eagle's scream 
Divide with him his home of ice: 



For me shall gentler notes suffice, — 
The valley-song of bird and stream; 

The pastoral bleat, the drone of 
bees. 
The flail-beat chiming far away. 
The cattle-low, at shut of day, 

The voice of God in leaf and breeze ! 60 

Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend, 
And help me to the; vales below, 
(Li truth, I have not far to go,) 

Where sweet with flowers the fields 
extend. 



THE MEMORY OF BURNS 

Read at the Boston celebration of the 
hiiiidrcdth aiiniversar}'' of the birth of Rob- 
ert Burns, 25th 1st mo., 1859. 

How sweetly come the holy psalms 

From saints and martyrs down, 
The waving of triinnphal palms 

Above the thorny crown ! 
The choral praise, the chanted prayers 

From harps by angels strung, 
The hunted Cameron's mountain 
airs, 

The liymns that Luther sung I 

Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes. 

The soimds of earth are heard. 
As tlirough the open minster floats 

The song of breeze and bird ! 
Not less the wonder of the sky 

That daisies bloom below; 
The brook sings on, though loud and 
high 

The cloudy organs blow! 

And, if the tender ear be jarred 

That, haply, hears by turns 
The saintly harp of Olney's bard, 

The pastoral pipe of I^urns, 
No discord mars His perfect plan 

Who gave them ))oth a tongue; 
For he wlio sings tlie love of man 

The love of God hath sung ! 

To-day be every fault forgiven 

Of him in whom we joy ! 
We take, with thanks, tlie gold of 
Heaven 

And leave the earth's alloy. 



IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE 



245 




Joseph Sturge 



Be ours his music as of spring, 
His sweetness as of flowers, 

The songs the bard himself might sing 
In hoher ears tlian ours. 

Sweet airs of love and home, the hum 

Of household melodies, 
Come singing, as the robins come 

To sing in door-yard trees. 
And, heart to heart, two nations lean, 

No rival wreaths to twine. 
But blending in eternal green 

The holly and the pine ! 



IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH 
STURGE 



In the fair land o'erwatched 
Ischia's mountains, 
Across the charmed bay 



by 



Whose blue waves keep with Capri's 
silver fountains 
Perpetual holiday, 

A king lies dead, his wafer duly 

eaten. 

His gold-bought masses given; 
And Rome's great altar smokes with 
gums to sweeten 

Her foulest gift to Heaven. 

And while all Naples thrills with mute 
thanksgiving, 
The court of England's queen 
For the dead monster so abhorred 
while living »' 

In mourning garb is seen. 

With a true sorrow God rebukes that 
feigning; 
By lone Edgbaston's side 



246 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Stands a ^fi^rent city in the sky's sad 
raining, 
Barelieadod and wet-eyed ! 

Silent for once the restless hive of 
labor, 
Save the low funeral tread, 
Or voice of craftsman whispering to 
his neighbor 
The good deeds of the dead. 20 

For him no minster's chant of the im- 
mortals 
Rose from the lips of sin; 
No mitred priest swung back the 
heavenly portals 
To let the white soul in. 

But Age and Sickness framed their 

tearful faces 

In the low hovel's door, 

And prayers went up from all the dark 

by-places 

And Ghettos of the poor. 

The pallid toiler and the negro chattel, 
The vagrant of the street, 30 

The human dice wherewith in games 
of battle 
The lords of earth compete, 

Touched with a gi-ief that needs no 
outward draping. 
All swelled the long lament, 
Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, 
shaping 
His viewless monument ! 

For never yet, with ritual pomp and 
splendor, 
In the long heretofore, 
A heart more loyal, warm, and true, 
and tender. 
Has England's turf closed 
o'er. 40 

And if there fell from out her grand 

old steeples 

No crash of brazen wail. 

The murmurous woe of kindreds, 

tongues, and peoples 

Swept in on every gale. 

It came from Holstein's birchen- 
l)olted meadows, 
And from the tropic calms 



Of Indian islands in the sun-smit 
shadows 
Of Occidental palms; 

From the locked roadsteads of the 
Bothnian peasants. 
And harbors of the Finn, so 
Where war's worn victims saw his 
gentle presence 
Come sailing, Christ-like, in, 

To seek the lost, to build the old 
waste places. 
To link the hostile shores 
Of severing seas, and sow with Eng- 
land's daisies 
The moss of Finland's moors. 

Thanks for the good man's beautiful 
example, 
Who in the vilest saw 
Some sacred crypt or altar of a tem- 
ple 
Still vocal with God's law; 60 

And heard with tender ear the spirit 
sighing 
As from its prison cell. 
Praying for pity, like the mournful 
crying 
Of Jonah out of hell. 

Not his the golden pen's or lip's per- 
suasion, 
But a fine sense of right. 
And Truth's directness, meeting each 
occasion 
Straight as a line of light. 

His faith and works, like streams that 

intermingle. 

In the same channel ran: 70 

The crystal clearness of an eye kept 

single 

Shamed all the frauds of man. 

The very gentlest of all human na- 
tures 
He joined to courage strong. 
And love outreaching unto all God's 
creatures 
With sturdy hate of wrong. 

Tender as woman, manliness and 
meekness 
In him were so allied 



NAPLES 



247 



That they who judged him by his 
strength or weakness 
Saw but a single side. 80 

Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal 
seemed nourished 
By failure and by fall; 
Still a large faith in human-kind he 
cherished, 
And in God's love for all. 

And now he rests: his greatness and 
his sweetness 
No more shall seem at strife. 
And death has moulded into calm 
completeness 
The statue of his life. 

Where the dews glisten and the song- 
birds warble, 
His dust to dust is laid, 90 

In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of 
marble 
To shame his modest shade. 

The forges glow, the hammers all are 
ringing; 
Beneath its smoky veil, 
Hard by, the city of his love is swing- 
ing 
Its clamorous iron flail. 

But round his grave are quietude and 

beauty, 

And the sweet heaven above, — 

The fitting symbols of a life of 

duty 

Transfigured into love ! 100 



BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE 

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on 
his dying day: 

" I will not have to shrive my soul a 
priest in Slavery's pay. 

But let some poor slave-mother whom 
I have striven to free. 

With her children, from the gallows- 
stair put up a prayer for 
me!" 

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led 

him out to die; 
And lo ! a poor slave-mother with her 

little child pressed nigh. 



Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, 

and the old harsh face grew 

mild, 
As he stooped between the jeering 

ranks and kissed the negro's 

child! 

The shadows of his stormy life that 
moment fell apart; 

And they who l^lamed the bloody 
hand forgave the loving heart. 

That kiss from all its guilty means re- 
deemed the good intent, 

And round tlie grisly fighter's hair the 
martyr's aureole bent ! 

Perish with him the folly that seeks 
through evil good ! 

Long live the generous purpose un- 
stained with human blood I 

Not the raid of midnight terror, but 
the thought which underlies; 

Not the borderer's pride of daring, but 
the Christian's sacrifice. 

Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the 

Northern rifle hear, 
Nor see the light of blazing homes 

flash on the negro's spear. 
But let the free-winged angel Truth 

their guarded passes scale. 
To teach that right is more than 

might, and justice more than 

mail 1 

So vainly shall Virginia set her battle 

in array; 
In vain her trampling squadrons knead 

the winter snow with clay. 
She may strike the pouncing eagle, 

but she dares not harm the 

dove; 
And every gate she bars to Hate shall 

open wide to Love ! 



NAPLES 
1860 

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON, 
OF BOSTON 

I GIVE thee joy ! — I know to thee 
The dearest spot on earth must be 
Where sleeps thy loved one by the 
summer sea; 



248 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Where, near her sweetest poet's 

tomb, 
The hind of Virgil gave thee room 
To hiy thy flower with her perpetual 
bloom. 

I know that when the sky shut 

down 
Behind thee on the gleaming 

town, 
On Baiie's baths and Posilippo's 

crown ; 

And, through thy tears, the 

mocking day 
Burned Ischia's mountain lines 

away. 
And Capri melted in its sunny bay ; 

Through thy great farewell sor- 
row shot 

The sharp pang of a bitter 
thought 
That slaves must tread around that 
holy spot. 

Thou knewest not the land was 

blest 
In giving thy beloved rest. 
Holding the fond hope closer to her 

breast. 

That every sweet and saintly 

grave 
Was freedom's prophecy, and 

gave 
The pledge of Heaven to sanctify and 

save. 

That pledge is answered. To thy 

ear 
The unchained cit}'^ sends its 

cheer. 
And, tuned to joy, the muffled bells of 

fear 

Ring Victor in. The land sits free 
And happy by the summer sea, 
And Bourbon Naples now is Italy ! 

She smiles above her broken 

chain 
The languid smile that follows 

pain, 
Stretching her cramped limbs to the 

sun again. 



Oh, joy for all, who hear her call 
From gray Camaldoli's convent- 
wall 
And Elmo's towers to freedom's car- 
nival ! 

A new life breathes among her 
vines 
And olives, like the breath of pines 
Blown dow^nward from the breezy 
Apennines. 

Lean, O my friend, to meet that 

breath, 
Rejoice as one who witnesseth 
Beauty from ashes rise, and life from 

death ! 

Thy sorrow shall no more be pain, 
Its tears shall fall in sunlit rain. 
Writing the grave with flowers: 
"Arisen again!" 



A MEMORIAL 

Moses Austin Cartland, a dear friend and 
relation, who led a faithful life as a teacher, 
and died in the summer of 1863. 

Oh, thicker, deeper, darker growing, 
The solemn vista to the tomb 

Must know henceforth another sha- 
dow, 
And give another cypress room. 

In love surpassing that of brothers, 
We walked, O friend, from child- 
hood's day; 

And, looking back o'er fifty summers, 
Our footprints track a common way. 

One in our faith , and one our longing 
To make the world within our 
reach 10 

Somewhat the better for our living. 
And gladder for our human speech. 

Thou heard'st with me the far-off 
voices. 

The old beguiling song of fame. 
But life to thee was warm and present, 

And love was better than a name. 

To homely joys and loves and friend- 
ships 
Thy genial nature fondly clung; 



BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY 



249 



And so the shadow on the dial 

Ran back and left thee always 
young. ■'^o 

And who could blame the generous 
weakness 
Which, only to thyself unjust, 
So overprized the worth of others, 
And dwarfed thy own with self-dis- 
trust ? 

All hearts grew warmer in the presence 
Of one who, seeking not his own, 

Gave freely for the love of giving. 
Nor reaped for self the harvest 
sown. 

Thy greeting smile was pledge and 
prelude 
Of generous deeds and kindly 
words; 30 

In thy large heart were fair guest- 
chambers. 
Open to sunrise and the birds ! 

The task was thine to mould and 
fashion 
Life's plastic newness into grace: 
To make the boyish heart heroic. 
And light with thought the maid- 
en's face. 

O'er all the land, in town and prairie, 
With bended heads of mourning, 
stand 

The living forms that owe their beauty 
And fitness to thy shaping hand. 40 

Thy call has come in ripened man- 
hood. 
The noonday calm of heart and 
mind, 
While I, who dreamed of thy remain- 
ing 
To mourn me, linger still behind: 

Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding, 
A debt of love still due from me, — 

The vain remembrance of occasions, 
Forever lost, of serving thee. 

It was not mine among thy kindred 
To join the silent funeral prayers, 50 

But all that long sad day of summer 
My tears of mourning dropped with 
theirs. 



All day the sea-waves sobbed with 
sorrow. 
The birds forgot their merry trills: 
All day I heard the pines laiuenting 
With thine upon thy homestead 
hills. 

Green be those hillside pines forever. 
And green the meadowy lowlands 
be, 

And green the old memorial beeches, 
Name-carven in the woods of Lee ! 

Still let them greet thy life compan- 
ions 61 

Who thither turn their pilgrim feet, 
In every mossy line recalling 

A tender memory sadly sweet. 

O friend ! if thought and sense avail 
not 

To know thee henceforth as thou art. 
That all is well with thee forever 

I trust the instincts of my heart. 

Thine be the quiet habitations. 

Thine the green pastures, blossom- 
sown, 70 

And smiles of saintly recognition. 
As sweet and tender as thy own. 

Thou com'st not from the hush and 
shadow 
To meet us, but to thee we come, 
With thee we never can be strangers, 
And where thou art must still be 
home. 



BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY 

We praise not now the poet's art, 
The rounded beauty of his song; 

Who weighs him from liis life apart 
Must do his nobler nature wrong. 

Not for the eye, familiar grown 

With charms to common sight de- 
nied, — 
The marvellous gift lie shares alone 
With him who walked on Rydal- 
side; 

Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, 
Too grave for smiles, too sweet for 
tears; 



250 



PERSONAL POEMS 



We speak his praise who wears to-day 
The glory of his seventy years. 

When Peace brings Freedom in her 
train, 

Let happy Ups his songs rehearse; 
His hfo is now his noblest strain, 

His manhood better than his verse ! 

Thank God! his hand on Nature's 
keys 
Its cunning keeps at life's full span; 
But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times 
like these, 
The poet seems beside the man ! 

So be it ! let the garlands die. 

The singer's wreath, the painter's 
meed, 
Let our names perish, if thereby 
Our country may be saved and 
freed ! 



THOMAS STARR KING 

The great work laid upon his two- 
score years 
Is done, and well done. If we drop our 

tears, 
Who loved him as few men were ever 

loved. 
We mourn no blighted hope nor 

broken plan 
With him whose life stands rounded 

and approved 
In the full growth. and stature of a 

man. 
Mingle, O bells, along the Western 

slope. 
With your deep toll a sound of faith 

and liope ! 
Wave cheerily still, O banner, half- 
way down, 
From thousand-masted bay and stee- 

pled town ! 
I^et the strong organ with its loftiest 

swell 
Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and 

tell 
That the brave sower saw his ripened 

grain. 
O East and West ! O mom and sunset 

twain 
No more forever ! — has he lived in 

vain 



Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, 

and told 
Your bridal service from his lips of 

gold? 

LINES ON A FLY-LEAF 

Suggested bj'^ the book A New Atmos- 
phere, by Gail Hamilton. 

I NEED not ask thee, for my sake, 
To read a book which well may make 
Its way by native force of wit 
Without my manual sign to it. 
Its piquant writer needs from me 
No gravely masculine guaranty. 
And well might laugh her merriest 

laugh 
At broken spears in her behalf; 
Y'et, spite of all the critics tell, 
I frankly own I like her well. 10 

It may be that she wields a pen 
Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned 

men. 
That her keen arrows search and try 
The armor joints of dignity. 
And, though alone for error meant. 
Sing through the air irreverent. 
I blame her not, the young athlete 
Who plants her woman's tiny feet. 
And dares the chances of debate 
Where bearded men might hesitate, 20 
Who, deeply earnest, seeing well 
The ludicrous and laughable. 
Mingling in eloquent excess 
Her anger and her tenderness. 
And, chiding with a half-caress, 
Strives, less for her own sex than ours, 
With principalities and powers. 
And points us upward to the clear 
Sunned heights of her new atmos- 
phere. 

Heaven mend her faults ! — I will not 
pause 30 

To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws, 
Or waste my pity wheti some fool 
Provokes her measureless ridicule. 
Strong-minded is she ? Better so 
Than dulness set for sale or show, 
A household folly, capped and belled 
In fashion's dance of puppets held. 
Or poor pretence of womanhood. 
Whose formal, flavorless platitude 
Is warranted from all offence 40 

Of robust meaning's violence. 



GEORGE L. STEARNS 



Give me the wine of thought whose 

bead 
Sparkles along the page I read, — 
Electric words in which I find 
The tonic of the northwest wind; 
The wisdom which itself allies 
To sweet and pure humanities, 
Where scorn of meanness, hate of 

wrong, 
Are underlaid by love as strong; 
The genial play of mirth that lights so 
Grave themes of thought, as when, on 

nights 
Of summer-time, the harmless blaze 
Of thunderless heat-lightning plays. 
And tree and hill-top resting dim 
And doubtful on the sky's vague rim. 
Touched by that soft and lambent 

gleam, 
Start sharply outlined from their 

dream. 

Talk not to me of woman's sphere. 
Nor point with Scripture texts a 

sneer. 
Nor wrong the manliest saint of all 60 
By doubt, if he were here, that Paul 
Would own the heroines who have 

lent 
Grace to truth's stern arbitrament. 
Foregone the praise to woman sweet, 
And cast their crowns at Duty's 

feet; 
Like her, who by her strong Appeal 
Made Fashion weep and Mammon 

feel. 
Who, earliest summoned to withstand 
The color-madness of the land, 
Counted her hfe-long losses gain, ^ 70 
And made her own her sisters' pain; 
Or her who, in her greenwood shade, 
Heard the sharp call that Freedom 

made. 
And, answering, struck from Sappho's 

lyre 
Of love the Tyrtsean carmen's fire: 
Or that young girl, — Domremy's 

maid 
Revived a nobler cause to aid, — 
Shaking from warning finger-tips 
The doom of her apocalypse; 
Or she, who world-wide entrance 

gave ^° 

To the log-cabin of the slave. 
Made all his want and sorrow known, 
And all earth's languages his own. 



251 



GEORGE L. STEARNS 

He has done the work of a true 
man, — 

Crown him, honor him, love him. 
Weep over him, tears of woman. 

Stoop manliest brows above him ! 

O dusky mothers and daughters. 
Vigils of mourning keep for him ! 

Up in the mountains, and down by the 
waters. 
Lift up your voices and weep for him ! 

For the warmest of hearts is frozen. 
The freest of hands is still; 

And the gap in our picked and chosen 
The long years may not fill. 

No duty could overtask him, 

No need his will outrun; 
Or ever our lips could ask him. 

His hands the work had done. 

He forgot his own soul for others, 
Himself to his neighbor lending; 

He found the Lord in his suffering 
brothers. 
And not in the clouds descending. 

So the bed was sweet to die on, 
Whence he saw the doors wide 
swung 

Against whose bolted iron 

The strength of his life was flung. 

And he saw ere his eye was darkened 
The sheaves of the harvest-bring- 
ing, 

And knew while his ear yet hearkened 
The voice of the reapers singing. 

Ah, well! The world is discreet; 

There are plenty to pause and wait; 
But here was a man who set his feet 

Sometimes in advance of fate; 

Plucked off the old bark when tlie inner 

Was slow to renew it, 
And put to the Lord's work the sinner 

When saints failed to do it. 

Never rode to the wrong's redressing 

A worthier paladin. 
Shall he not hear the blessing, 

" Good and faitliful, enter in I " 



252 



PERSONAL POEMS 



GARIBALDI 

In trance and dream of old, God's 
prophet saw 
The casting down of thrones. Thou, 

watching lone 
The hot Sardinian coast-hne, hazy- 
hilled, 
Where, fringing round Caprera's 
rocky zone 
With foam, the slow waves gather and 
withdraw. 
Behold 'st the vision of the seer ful- 
filled. 
And hear'st the sea-winds burdened 

with a sound 
Of falling chains, as, one by one, un- 
bound. 
The nations lift their right hands up 
and swear 
Their oath of freedom. From the 
chalk-white wall 
Of England, from the black Car- 
pathian range. 
Along the Danube and the Theiss, 

through all 
The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees, 
And from the Seine's thronged banks, 
a murmur strange 
And glad floats to thee o'er thy sum- 
mer seas 
On the salt wind that stirs thy whit- 
ening hair, — • 
The song of freedom's bloodless vic- 
tories ! 
Rejoice, O Garibaldi! Though thy 

sword 
Failed at Rome's gates, and blood 

seemed vainly poured 
Where, in Christ's name, the crowned 

infidel 
Of France wrought murder with the 
arms of hell 
On that sad mountain slope whose 
ghostly dead, 
rnmindful of the gray exorcist's ban, 
Walk, unappeased, the chambered 
Vatican, 
And draw the curtains of Napo- 
leon's lied ! 
God's providence is not blind, but, 

lull of eyes. 
It searches all the refuges of lies; 
And in His time and way, the ac- 
cursed things 
Before whose evil feet thy battle-gage 



Has clashed defiance from hot 

youth to age 
Shall perish. All men shall be priests 

and kings, 
One royal brotherhood, one church 

made free 
By love, which is the law of liberty ! 



TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD 

ON READING HER POEM IN '' THE STAN- 
DARD " 

The sweet spring day is glad with 
music, 
But through it sounds a sadder 
strain; 
The worthiest of our narrowing circle 
Sings Loring's dirges o'er again. 

woman greatly loved ! I join thee 
In tender memories of our friend; 

With thee across the awful spaces 
The greeting of a soul I send ! 

What cheer hath he ? How is it with 
him? 
Where lingers he this weary while ? 
Over what pleasant fields of Heaven 
Dawns the sweet sunrise of his 
smile ? 

Does he not know our feet are tread- 
ing 
The earth hard down on Slavery's 
grave ? 
That, in our crowning exultations, 
We miss the charm his presence 
gave? 

Why on this spring air comes no whis- 
per 
From him to tell us all is well ? 
Why to our flower-time comes no 
token 
Of lily and of asphodel ? 

1 feel the unutterable longing, 
Thy hunger of the heart is mine; 

I reach and grope for hands in dark- 
ness, 
My ear grows sharp for voice or sign. 

Still on the lips of all we question 
The finger of God's silence hes; 



THE SINGER 




253 



Lydia Maria Child 



Will the lost hands in ours be folded ? 
Will the shut eyelids ever rise ? 

O friend! no proof beyond this 

yearning, 

This outreach of our hearts, we need; 

God will not mock the hope He giveth, 

No love He prompts shall vainly 

plead. 

Then let us stretch our hands in dark- 
ness, 
And call our loved ones o'er and o'er; 
Some day their arms shall close about 
us, 
And the old voices speak once more. 



No dreary splendors wait our coming 
Where rapt ghost sits from gliost 
apart; 
Homeward we go to Heaven's thanks- 
giving, 
The harvest-gathering of the heart. 



THE SINGER 

Years since (hut names to me be- 
fore), 

Two sisters sought at eve my door; 

Two song-birds wandering from their 
nest, 

A gray old farm-house in the West. 



254 



PERSONAL POEMS 



How fresh of life the younger one, 
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in 

sun ! 
Her gravest mood could scarce displace 
The dimples of her nut-brown face. 

Wit sparkled on her lips not less 
For (juick and tremulous tenderness; 
And, following close her merriest 

glance, ^ ^ 

Dreamed through her eyes the heart's 

romance. 

Timid and still, the elder had 
Even then a smile too sweetly sad; 
The crown of pain that all must wear 
Too early pressed her midnight hair. 

Yet ere the summer eve grew long. 
Her modest lips were sweet with 

song; 
A memory haunted all her words 
Of clover-fields and singing-birds. 20 

Her dark, dilating eyes expressed 

The broad horizons of the west; 

Her speech dropped prairie flowers; 

the gold 
Of harvest wheat about her rolled. 

Fore-doomed to song she seemed to 

me: 
I queried not with destiny: 
I knew the trial and the need, 
Yet, all the more, I said, God speed ! 

What could I other than I did ? 
Could I a singing-bird forbid ? 30 

Deny the wind-stirred leaf? Rebuke 
The music of the forest brook ? 

Slie went with morning from my door. 
But loft me richer tlian before; 
Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer, 
The welcome of her partial ear. 

Years passed : through all the land her 

name 
A plea.sant household word became: 
All felt beliind the singer stood 
A sweet and gracious womanhood. 40 

Her life was earnest work, not play; 
Her tired feet climl)ed a weary way'; 
And even through her lightest strain 
W e heard an undertone of pain. 



Unseen of her her fair fame grew, 
The good she did she rarely knew, 
Unguessed of her in life the love 
That rained its tears her grave above. 

When last I saw her, full of peace, 
She waited for her great release; 50 
And that old friend so sage and bland, 
Our later Franklin, held her hand. 

For all that patriot bosoms stirs 
Had moved that woman's heart of hers, 
And men who toiled in storm and sun 
Found her their meet companion. 

Our converse, from her suffering bed 
To healthful themes of life she led: 
The out-door world of bud and bloom 
And light and sweetness filled her 
room. 60 

Yet evermore an underthought 
Of loss to come within us wrought. 
And all the while we felt the strain 
Of the strong will that conquered pain. 

God giveth quietness at last ! 
The common way that all have passed 
She went, with mortal yearnings fond. 
To fuller life and love beyond. 

Fold the rapt soul in your embrace, 69 
My dear ones ! Give the singer place ! 
To you, to her, — I know not where, — 
I lift the silence of a prayer. 

For only thus our own we find; 
The gone before, the left behind. 
All mortal voices die between; 
The unheard reaches the unseen. 

Again the blackbirds sing; the 

streams 
Wake, laughing, from their winter 

.dreams. 
And tremble in the April showers 
The tassels of the maple flowers. 80 

But not for her has spring renewed 
The sweet surprises of the wood; 
And bird and flower are lost to her 
Who was their best interpreter ! 

What to shut eyes has God revealed ? 
What hear the ears that death has 
sealed ? 



SUMNER 



255 



What undreamed beauty passing 

show 
Requites the loss of all we know ? 

O silent land, to which we move, 
Enough if there alone be love, go 

And mortal need can ne'er outgrow 
What it is waiting to bestow ! 

O white soul ! from that far-off shore 
Float some sweet song the waters 

o'er, 
Our faith confirm, our fears dispel, 
With the old voice we loved so well ! 



HOW MARY GREW 

With wisdom far beyond her years, 
And graver than her wondering peers. 
So strong, so mild, combining still 
The tender heart and queenly will, 
To conscience and to duty true. 
So, up from childhood, Mary Grew ! 

Then in her gracious womanhood 
She gave her days to doing good, 
She dared the scornful laugh of men, 
The hounding mob, the slanderer's 

pen. 
She did the work she found to do, — 
A Christian heroine, Mary Grew ! 

The freed slave thanks her; blessing 

comes 
To her from women's weary homes; 
The wronged and erring find in her 
Their censor mild and comforter. 
The world were safe if but a few 
Could grow in grace as Mary Grew ! 

So, New Year's Eve, I s"it and say, 
By this low wood-fire, ashen gray; 
Just wishing, as the night shuts down. 
That I could hear in Boston town, 
In pleasant Chestnut Avenue, 
From her own lips, how Mary Grew ! 

And hear her graceful hostess tell 

The silver-voiced oracle 

Who lately through her parlors spoke, 

As through Dodona's sacred oak, 

A wiser truth than any told 

By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold, — 

The wav to make the world anew 

Is just to grow — as Mary Grew ! 



SUMNER 

" I am not one who has disgraced beauty 
of sentiment by deformity of conduct, or 
the maxims of a freeman bv the actions of 
a slave; but, by the grace of God, I have 
kept my life unsullied." — Milton's De- 
fence of the People of England. 

MOTHER State ! the winds of March 
Blew chill o'er Auburn's Field of 

God, 
Where, slow, beneath a leaden arch 
Of sky, thy mourning children trod. 

And now, with all thy woods in leaf. 
Thy fields in flower, beside thy dead 

Thou sittest. in thy robes of grief, 
A Rachel yet uncomforted ! 

And once again the organ swells. 
Once more the flag is half-way hung, 

And yet again the mournful bells n 
In all thy steeple-towers are rung. 

And I, obedient to thy will. 

Have come a simple wreath to lay, 
Superfluous, on a grave that still 

Is sweet with all the flowers of May. 

1 take, with awe, the task assigned; 
It may be that my friend might miss 

In his new sphere of heart and mind, 
Some token from my hand in tiiis. 20 

By many a tender memory moved, 
Along the past my thought I send; 

The record of the cause he loved 
Is the best record of its friend. 

No trumpet sounded in liis ear, 
He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame, 

But never yet to Hebrew seer 
A clearer voice of duty came. 

God said: "Break thou these yokes; 
undo 

These heavy burdens. I ordain 30 
A work to last thy whole lifr through, 

A ministry of strife and pain. 

" Forego thy dreams of lettered ease. 
Put thou the scholar's promise by, 
The rights of man are more than 
these." 
He heard, and answered: "Here 
ami!" 



56 



PERSONAL POEMS 



He set his face against the blast, 
His feet against the flinty shard, 

Till the hard service grew, at last, 
Its own exceeding great reward. 4© 

Lifted like Saul's above the crowd, 
Upon his kingly forehead fell 

The first sharp bolt of Slavery's cloud, 
Launched at the truth he urged so 
well. 

Ah ! never yet, at rack or stake 
Was sorer loss made Freedom's gain. 

Than his, who suffered for her sake 
The beak-torn Titan's lingering 
pain ! 

The fixed star of his faith, through all 

Loss, doubt, and peril, shone the 

same ; 50 

As through a night of storm, some tall. 

Strong lighthouse lifts its steady 

flame. 

Beyond the dust and smoke he saw 
The sheaves of Freedom's large in- 
crease. 

The holy fanes of equal law, 
The New Jerusalem of peace. 

The weak might fear, the worldling 
mock. 

The faint and blind of heart regret; 
All knew at last th' eternal rock 59 

On which his forward feet were set. 

The subtlest scheme of compromise 

Was folly to his purpose bold; 
The strongest mesh of party lies 
* Weak to the simplest truth he told. 

One language held his heart and lip, 
Straigiit onward to his goal he trod, 

And proved the highest statesmanship 
Obedience to the voice of God. 

No wail was in his voice, — none heard. 
When treason's storm-cloud black- 
est grew, 70 

The weakness of a doubtful word; 
His duty, and the end, he knew. 

The first to smite, the first to spare; 

When once the hostile ensigns fell. 
He stretched out handsof generouscare 

To lift the foe he fought so well. 



For there was nothing base or small 
Or craven in his soul's broad plan; 

Forgiving all things personal. 

He hated only wrong to man. 80 

The old traditions of his State, 

The memories of her great and good, 

Took from his life a fresher date. 
And in himself embodied stood. 

How felt the greed of gold and place, 
The venal crew that schemed and 
planned. 

The fine scorn of that haughty face, 
The spurning of that bribeless hand! 

If than Rome's tribunes statelier 
He wore his senatorial robe, 90 

His lofty port was all for her. 

The one dear spot on all the globe. 

If to the master's plea he gave 

The vast contempt his manhood 
felt. 

He saw a brother in the slave, — 
With man as equal man he dealt. 

Proud was he ? If his presence kept 
Its grandeur wheresoe'er he trod, 

As if from Plutarch's gallery stepped 
The hero and the demigod, 100 

None failed, at least, to reach his ear. 
Nor want nor woe appealed in vain; 

The homesick soldier knew his cheer, 
And blessed him from his ward of 
pain. 

Safely his dearest friends may own 
The slight defects he never hid, 

The surface-blemish in the stone 
Of the tall, stately pyramid. 

Suffice it that he never brought 109 
His conscience to the public mart; 

But lived himself the truth he taught, 
White-souled, clean-handed, pure 
of heart. 

What if he felt the natural pride 
Of power in noble use, too true 

With thin humilities to hide 

The work he did, the lore he knew ? 

Was he not just ? Was any wronged 
By that assured self-estimate ? 



SUMNER 



257 



He took but what to him belonged. 
Unenvious of another's state. 120 

Well might he heed the words he 

spake, 

And scan with care the written page 

Through which he still shall warm and 

wake 

The hearts of men from age to age. 

Ah! who shall blame him now be- 
cause 
He solaced thus his hours of pain ! 
Should not the o'erworn thresher 
pause, 
And hold to light his golden grain ? 

No sense of humor dropped its oil 
On the hard ways his purpose went; 

Small play of fancy lightened toil; 131 
He spake alone the thing he meant. 

He loved his books, the Art that hints 
A beauty veiled behind its own, 

The graver's line, the pencil's tints, 
The chisel's shape evoked from 
stone. 

He cherished, void of selfish ends, 
The social courtesies that bless 138 

And sweeten life, and loved his friends 
With most unworldly tenderness. 

But still his tired eyes rarely learned 
The glad relief by Nature brought ; 

Her mountain ranges never turned 
His current of persistent thought. 

The sea rolled chorus to his speech 
Three-banked like Latium's tall 
trireme, 
With laboring oars; the grove and 
beach 
Were Forum and the Academe. 

The sensuous joy from all things fair 
His strenuous bent of soul repressed. 
And left from youth to silvered hair 
Few hours for pleasure, none for 
rest. 152 

For all his life was poor without. 

O Nature, make the last amends ! 
Train all thy flowers his grave about, 

And make thy singing-birds his 
friends ! 



Revive again, thou summer rain, 
The broken turf upon his bed! 

Breathe, summer wind, thy tendercst 
strain 
Of low, sweet music overhead ! 160 

With calm and beauty symbolize 
The peace which follows long annoy. 

And lend our earth-bent, mourning 
eyes, 
Some hint of his diviner joy. 

For safe with right and truth he is. 
As God lives he nuist live alway; 

There is no end for souls like his, 
No night for children of the day ! 

Nor cant nor poor solicitudes 

Made weak his life's great argu- 
ment; 170 

Small leisure his for frames and moods 
Who followed Duty where she went. 

The broad, fair fields of God he saw 
Beyond the bigot's narrow bound; 

The truths he moulded into law 
In Christ's beatitudes he found. 

His state-craft was the Golden Rule, 
His right of vote a sacred trust; 

Clear, over threat and ridicule. 

All heard his challenge: "Is it 

just?" 180 

And when the hour supreme had 
come. 

Not for himself a thought he gave; 
In that last pang of martyrdom. 

His care was for the half-freed slave. 

Not vainly dusky hands upbore, 
In prayer, the passing soul to 
heaven 

Whose mercy to His suffering poor 
Was service to the Master given. 

Long shall the good State's annals tell, 

Her children's children long be 

taught, 190 

How, praised or blamed, he guarded 

well 

The trust he neither shunned nor 

sought. 

If for one moment turned thy face, 
O Mother, from thy son, not long 



2S8 



PERSONAL POEMS 



He waited calmly in his place 

The sure remorse which follows 
wrong. 

P'orgiven be the State he loved 

The one brief lapse, the single blot; 

Forgotten l)e tlie stain removed, 
Her righted record shows it not ! 200 

The lifted sword above her shield 
With jealous care shall guard his 
fame; 
The pine-tree on her ancient field 
To all the winds shall speak his 
name. 

The marble image of her son 

Her loving hands shall yearly crown. 

And from her pictured Pantheon 
His grand, majestic face look down. 

O State so passing rich before, 

Who now shall doubt thy highest 
claim? 210 

The world that counts thy jewels o'er 
Shall longest pause at Sumner's 



name : 



THIERS 



Fate summoned, in gray-bearded 

age, to act 
A history stranger than his written 

fact. 
Him who portrayed the splendor 

and the gloom 
Of that great hour when throne and 

altar fell 
With long death-groan which still is 

audible. 
He, when around the walls of 

Paris rung 
Tiie Prussian bugle like the blast of 

doom,. 
And every ill which follows unblest war 
Maddened all France from Finistere 

to Var, 
The weight of fourscore from his 

shoulders flung. 
And guided Freedom in the path he 

saw 
Lead out of chaos into light and law; 
Peace, not imperial, but repul)lican. 
And order pledged to all the Rights of 

Man. 



II 



Death called him from a need as im- 
minent 

As that from which the Silent William 
went 

When powers of evil, like the smiting 
seas 

On Holland's dikes, assailed her liber- 
ties. 

Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance 
hung 

The weal and woe of France, the bells 
were rung 

For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will, 

Above his bier the hearts of men 
stood still. 

Then, as if set to his dead lips, the 
horn 

Of Roland wound once more to rouse 
and warn. 

The old voice filled the air ! His last 
brave word 

Not vainly France to all her boun- 
daries stirred. 

Strong as in life, he still for Freedom 
wrought, 

As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought. 



FITZ-GREENE HALLECK 

AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE 

Among their graven shapes to whom 

Thy civic wreaths belong, 
O city of his love, make room 

For one whose gift was song. 

Not his the soldier's sword to wield, 

Nor his the helm of state, 
Nor glory of the stricken field, 

Nor triumph of debate. 

In common ways, with common men. 
He served his race and time 10 

As well as if his clerkly pen 
Had never danced to rhyme. 

If, in the thronged and noisy mart. 
The Muses found their son, 

Could any say his tuneful art 
A duty left undone ? 

He toiled and sang ; and year by year 
Men found their homes more sweet. 



WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT 



259 



And through a tenderer atmosphere 
Looked down the brick-walled 
street. 20 

The Greek's wild onset Wall Street 
knew; 

The Red King walked Broadway; 
And Alnwick Castle's roses blew 

From Palisades to Bay. 

Fair City by the Sea ! upraise 
His veil with reverent hands; 

And mingle with thy own the praise 
And pride of other lands. 

Let Greece his fiery lyric breathe 
Above her hero-urns; 30 

And Scotland, with her holly, wreathe 
The flower he culled for Burns. 

Oh, stately stand thy palace walls, 
Thy tali ships ride the seas; 

To-day thy poet's name recalls 
A prouder thought than these. 

Not less thy pulse of trade shall beat, 
Nor less thy tall fleets swim. 

That shaded square and dusty street 
Are classic ground through him. 40 

Alive, he loved, like all who sing. 

The echoes of his song; 
Too late the tardy meed we bring. 

The praise delayed so long. 

Too late, alas ! Of all who knew 

The living man, to-day 
Before his imveiled face, how few 

Make bare their locks of gray ! 

Our lips of praise must soon be dumb, 
Our grateful eyes be dim; 5° 

O brothers of the days to come, 
' Take tender charge of him ! 

New hands the wires of song may 
sweep. 

New voices challenge fame; 
But let no moss of years o'ercreep 

The lines of Halleck's name. 



WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT 

Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn 
Beside her sea-blown shore; 



Her well beloved, her noblest born, 
Is hers in life no more ! 

No lapse of years can render less 
Her memory's sacred claim; 

No fountain of forgetfulness 
Can wet the lips of P'ame. 

A grief alike to wound and heal, 
A thought to soothe and pain, 10 

The sad, sweet pride that mothers 
feel 
To her must still remain. 

Good men and true she has not 
lacked, 

And brave men yet shall be; 
The perfect flower, the crowning fact, 

Of all her years was he ! 

As Galahad pure, as Merlin sage. 
What worthier knight was found 

To grace in Arthur's golden age 
The fabled Table Round ? 

A voice, the battle's trumpet-note, 

To welcome and restore; 
A hand, that all unwilling smote, 

To heal and build once more ! 

A soul of fire, a tender lieart 
Too warm for hate, he knew 

The generous victor's graceful part 
To sheathe the sword he drew. 

When Earth, as if on evil dreams, 
Looks back upon her wars, 30 

And the white light of Christ out- 
streams 
From the red disk of Mars, 

His fame who led the stormy van 

Of battle well may cease, 
But never that which crowns the 
man 

Whose victory was Peace. 

Mourn, Essex, on thy sea-blown shore 

Thy beautiful and brave. 
Whose failing hand the olive bore, 

Whose dying lips forgave ! 40 

Let age lament the youthful chief, 

And tender eyes be dim; 
The tears are more of joy tlian grief 

That fall for one like him 1 



26o 



PERSONAL POEMS 



BAYARD TAYLOR 



"And where now, Bayard, will thy 
footsteps tend?" 
My sister asked our guest one win- 
ter's day. 
Smiling he answered in the Friends' 
sweet way 
Common to both: "Wherever thou 

shalt send ! 
What wouldst thou have me see for 
thee?" She laughed. 
Her dark eyes dancing in the wood- 
fire's glow. 
" Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the 
low, 
Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing- 
craft." 
" All these and more I soon shall sec 
for thee!" 
He answered cheerily: and he kept 
his pledge lo 

On Lapland snows, the North 
Cape's windy wedge, 
And Tromso freezing in its winter sea. 
He went and came. But no man 

knows the track 
Of his last journey, and he comes 
not back ! 

II 

He brought us wonders of the new 
and old; 
We shared all climes with him. The 

Arab's tent 
To him its story-telling secret lent. 
And, pleased, we listened to the tales 

he told. 
His task, beguiled with songs that 
shall endure, 
In manly, honest thoroughness he 
wrought; 20 

From humble home-lays to the 
heights of thought 
Slowly he climbed, but every step 

was sure. 
How, with the generous pride that 
friendship hath, 
We, who so loved him, saw at last 

the crown 
Of civic honor on his brows pressed 
down. 
Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift 
was death. 



And now for him, whose praise in 

deafened ears 
Two nations speak, we answer but 

with tears ! 

Ill 

O Vale of Chester ! trod by him so oft, 

Green as thy June turf keep his 

memory. Let 30 

Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied 

stream forget. 

Nor winds that blow round lonely 

Cedarcroft; 
Let the home voices greet him in the 
far. 
Strange land that holds him ; let the 

messages 
Of love pursue him o'er the chart- 
less seas 
And unmapped vastness of his un- 
known star ! 
Love's language, heard beyond the 
loud discourse 
Of perishable fame, in every sphere 
Itself interprets; and its utterance 
here 
Somewhere in God's unfolding uni- 
verse 40 
Shall reach our traveller, softening 

the surprise 
Of his rapt gaze on unfamiliar skies ! 

OUR AUTOCRAT 

Read at the breakfast given in honor of 
Dr. Holmes b}' the publishers of the Atlan- 
tic Monthly, December 3, 1879. 

His laurels fresh from song and lay, 
Romance, art, science, rich in all. 

And young of heart, how dare we say 
We keep his seventieth festival ? 

No sense is here of loss or lack; 

Before his sweetness and his light 
The dial holds its shadow back, 

The charmed hours delay their 
flight. 

His still the keen analysis 

Of men and moods, electric wit. 

Free play of mirth, and tenderness 
To heal the slightest wound from it. 

And his the pathos touching all 
Life's sins and sorrows and regrets, 



WITHIN THE GATE 




Bayard Taylor 



Its hopes and fears, its final call 
And rest beneath the violets. 



His sparkling surface scarce betrays 
The thoughtful tide beneath it 
rolled, 

The wisdom of the latter days. 
And tender memories of the old. 

What shapes and fancies, grave or gay. 
Before us at his bidding come ! 

The Treadmill tramp, the One-Horse 
Shay, 
The dumb despair of Elsie's doom ! 

The tale of Avis and the Maid, 

The plea for lips that cannot speak, 

The holy kiss that Iris laid 

On Little Boston's pallid cheek ! 

Long may he live to sing for us 
His sweetest songs at evening time, 



And, like his Chambered Nautilus, 
To holier heights of beauty climb! 

Though now unnumbered guests sur- 
round 

The table that he rules at will, 
Its Autocrat, however crowned, 

Is but our friend and comrade still. 

The world may keep his honored 
name, 

The wealth of all his varied powers; 
A stronger claim lias love than fame, 

And he himself is only ours ! 



WITHIN THE GATE 

L. M. C. 

We sat together, last May-day, and 
talked 
Of the dear friends who walked 



262 



PERSONAL POEMS 



Beside us, sharers of the hopes and 
fears 
Of five and forty years, 

Since first we met in Freedom's hope 
forlorn, 
And heard her battle-horn 
Sound through the valleys of the sleep- 
ing North, 
Calling her children forth, 

And youtii pressed forward with hope- 
lighted eyes, 
And age, with forecast wise 10 
Of the long strife before the triumph 
won. 
Girded his armor on. 

Sadly, as name by name we called 
the roll. 
We heard the dead-bells toll 
For tile unanswering many, and we 
knew 
The living were the few. 

And we, who waited our own call 
before 
Tiie inevitable door, 
Listened and looked, as all have done, 
to win 
Some token from within. 20 

No sign we saw, we heard no voices 
call; 
The impenetrable w^all 
Cast down its shadow, like an awful 
doubt. 
On all who sat wdthout. 

Of many a hint of life beyond the 
veil, 
And many a ghostly tale 
Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf 
between 
The seen and the unseen, 

Seeking from omen, trance, and dream 
to gain 
Solace to doubtful pain, 30 

And toucli, witli groping hands, the 
garment hem 
Of truth sufficing them, 

We talked; and, turning from the 
sore imrest 
Of an all-baffling quest, 



W^e thought of holy lives that from 
us passed 
Hopeful unto the last, 

As if they saw beyond the river of 
death. 

Like Him of Nazareth, 
The many mansions of the Eternal days 

Lift up their gates of praise. 40 

And, hushed to silence by a reverent 
awe, 
Methought, O friend, I saw 
In thy true life of word, and work, and 
thought 
The proof of all we sought. 

Did we not witness in the life of thee 

Immortal prophecy ? 
And feel, when with thee, that thy 
footsteps trod 

An everlasting road ? 

Not for brief days thy generous sym- 
pathies. 
Thy scorn of selfish ease; 50 

Not for the poor prize of an earthly 
goal 
Thy strong uplift of soul. 

Than thine was never turned a fonder 
heart 
To nature and to art 
In fair-form.ed Hellas in her golden 
prime. 
Thy Philothea's time. 

Yet, loving beauty, thou couldst pass 
it by. 
And for the poor deny 
Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet 
flower of fame 
Wither in blight and blame. 60 

Sharing His love who holds in His 
embrace 

The lowliest of our race. 
Sure the Divine economy must be 

Conservative of thee ! 

For truth must live with truth, self- 
sacrifice 
Seek out its great allies; 
Good must find good by gravitation 
sure. 
And love with love endure. 



WILSON 



263 



And so, since thou hast passed within 
the gate 
Whereby awhile I wait, 70 

I give bhnd grief and blinder sense the 
lie: 
Thou hast not lived to die ! 



IN MEMORY 

JAMES T. FIELDS 

As a guest who may not stay 
Long and sad farewells to say 
Glides with smiling face away. 

Of the sweetness and the zest 
Of thy happy life possessed 
Thou hast left us at thy best. 

Warm of heart and clear of brain, 
Of thy sun-bright spirit's wane 
Thou hast spared us all the pain. 

Now that thou hast gone away, 10 
What is left of one to say 
Who was open as the day ? 

What is there to gloss or shun ? 
Save with kindly voices none 
Speak thy name beneath the sun. 

Safe thou art on every side, 
Friendship nothing finds to hide, 
Love's demand is satisfied. 

Over manly strength and worth, 

At thy desk of toil, or hearth, 20 

Played the lambent light of mirth, — • 

Mirth that lit, but never burned; 
All thy blame to pity turned; 
Hatred thou hadst never learned. 

Every harsh and vexing thing 
At thy liome-fire lost its sting; 
Where thou wast was always spring. 

And thy perfect trust in good. 
Faith in man and womanhood. 
Chance and change and time with- 
stood. ^° 

Small respect for cant and whine. 
Bigot's zeal and hate malign. 
Had that sunny soul of thine. 



But to thee was duty's claim 
Sacred, and thy lips became 
Reverent with one holy Name. 

Therefore, on thy unknown way. 
Go in God's peace ! We who stay 
But a little while delay. 

Keep for us, O friend, where'er 40 
Thou art waiting, all that here 
Made thy earthly presence dear; 

Something of thy pleasant past 
On a ground of wonder cast, 
In the stiller waters glassed ! 

Keep the human heart of thee; 
Let the mortal only be 
Clothed in immortality. 

And when fall our feet as fell 

Thine upon the asphodel, 50 

Let thy old smile greet us well; 

Proving in a world of bliss 
What we fondly dream in this, — 
Love is one with holiness ! 



WILSON 

Read at the Massachusetts Club on the 
seventieth anniversary of the birthday of 
Vice-President Wilson, February 16, 1882. 

The lowUest born of all the land, 
He wrung from Fate's reluctant 
hand 
The gifts which happier boyhood 
claims; 
And, tasting on a thankless soil 
The bitter bread of unpaid toil, 
He fed his soul with noble aims. 

And Nature, kindly provident. 
To him the future's promise lent; 

The powers tliat shape man's des- 
tinies. 
Patience and faith and toil, he knew, 
The close horizon round him grew 

Broad with great possil>ilities. 

By the low hearth-fire's fitful blaze 
He read of old heroic days, 

The sage's thought, the patriot's 
speech; 



264 



PERSONAL POEMS 




Wilson 



Unhelped, alone, himself he taught, 
His school the craft at which he 
wrought. 
His lore the book within his reach. 

He felt his country's need; he knew 
The work her children had to do; 

And when, at last, he heard the call 
In lier Ijelialf to serve and dare, 
Beside his senatorial chair 

He stood the unquestioned peer of 
all. 

Beyond the accident of birth 

He proved his simple manhood's worth; 

Ancestral pride and classic grace 
Confessed the large-brained artisan, 
So clear of sight, so wise in plan 

And counsel, ecjual to his place. 

With glance intuitive he saw 
Througli all disguise of form and law. 
And read men like an open book; 



Fearless and firm, he never quailed 
Nor turned aside for threats, nor 
failed 
To do the thing he undertook. 

How wise, how brave, he was, how 

well 
He bore himself, let history tell 
While waves our flag o'er land and 
sea, 
No black thread in its warp or weft; 
He found dissevered States, he left 
A grateful Nation, strong and free ! 



THE POET AND THE CHILDREN 

LONGFELLOW 

With a glory of winter sunshine 

Over his locks of gray, 
In the old historic mansion 

He sat on his last birthday; 



A WELCOME TO LOWELL 



265 



With his books and his pleasant pic- 
tures, 

And his household and his kin, 
While a sound as of myriads singing 

From far and near stole in. 

It came from his own fair city, 

From the prairie's boundless plain, 

From the Golden Gate of sunset, 
And the cedarn woods of Maine. 

And his heart grew warm within liim, 
And his moistening eyes grew dim, 

For he knew that his country's chil- 
dren 
Were singing the songs of him: 

The lays of his life's glad morning, 
The psalms of his evening time, 

Whose echoes shall float forever 
On the winds of every clime. 

All their beautiful consolations, 
Sent forth like birds of cheer. 

Came flocking back to his windows. 
And sang in the Poet's ear. 

Grateful, but solemn and tender, 

The music rose and fell 
With a joy akin to sadness 

And a greeting like farewell. 

With a sense of awe he listened 
To the voices sweet and young; 

The last of earth and the first of 
heaven 
Seemed in the songs they sung. 

And waiting a little longer 

For the wonderful change to come, 
He heard the Summoning Angel, 

Who calls God's children home ! 

And to him in a holier welcome 
Was the mystical meaning given 

Of the words of the blessed Master: 
" Of such is the kingdom of heaven ! " 



A WELCOME TO LOWELL 

Take our hands, James Russell 
Lowell, 

Our hearts are all thy own; 
To-day we bid thee welcome 

Not for ourselves alone. 



In the long years of thy absence 
Some of us have grown old, 

And some have passed the portals 
Of the Mystery untold; 

For the hands that cannot clasp 
thee. 

For the voices that are dumb, 10 
For each and all I bid thee 

A grateful welcome home ! 

For Cedarcroft's sweet singer 
To the nine-fold Muses dear; 

For the Seer the winding Concord 
Paused by his door to hear; 

For him, our guide and Nestor, 
Who the march of song began, 

The white locks of his ninety 
years 
Bared to thy winds. Cape Ann ! ao 

For him who, to the music 

Her pines and hemlocks played, 

Set the old and tender story 
Of the lorn Acadian maid; 

For him, whose voice for freedom 
Swayed friend and foe at will. 

Hushed is the tongue of silver, 
The golden lips are still ! 

For her whose life of duty 

At scoff and menace smiled, 30 

Brave as the wife of Roland, 

Yet gentle as a Child. 

And for him the three-hilled city 
Shall hold in memory long, 

Whose name is the hint and token 
Of the pleasant Fields of Song 1 

For the old friends unforgotten, 
For the young thou hast not known. 

I speak tlieir heart.-warin greeting; 
Come back and take thy own ! 40 

From England's royal farewells, 

And honors fitlv paid, 
Come back, dear ■Russell Lowell, 
• To Elmwood's waiting shade ! 

Come home with all the garlands 
That crown of right thy head. 

I speak for comrades living, 
I speak for comrades dead ! 



266 



PERSONAL POEMS 




" Luck to the craft that bears this name of mine " 



AN ARTIST OF THE 
BEAUTIFUL 

GEORGE FULLER 

Haunted of Beauty, like the marvel- 
lous youtli 
Who sang Saint Agnes' Eve ! How 

passing fair 
Her shapes took color in thy home- 
stead air ! 
How on thy canvas even her dreams 

were truth ! 
Magician ! who from commonest ele- 
ments 
Called up divine ideals, clothed upon 
By mystic lights soft blending into one 
Wonuuily grace and child-hke inno- 
cence. 
Teacher ! thy lesson was not given in 

vain. 
Beauty is goodness; ugliness is sin: 
Art's place is sacred: nothing foul therein 
May crawl or tread with bestial feet 

profane. 
If riglitly choosing is the painter's test. 
Thy choice, O master, ever was the best. 



MULFORD 

Author of The Nalion and The Republic 
of God. 

Unnoted as the setting of a star 
He passed; and sect and party 

scarcely knew 
When from their midst a sage and 

seer withdrew 
To fitter audience, where the great 

dead are 
In God's republic of the heart and 

mind, 
Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind. 

TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER 

TjUCK to the craft that bears this name 

of mine. 
Good fortune follow with her golden 

spoon 
The glazed hat and tarry pantaloon; 
And wheresoe'er her keel shall cut the 

brine. 
Cod, hake and haddock quarrel for 

her line. 



SAMUEL J. TILDEN 



267 



Shipped with her crew, whatever wind 

may blow, 
Or tides delay, my wish with her shall 

go, 
Fishing l3y proxy. Would that it 

might show 
At need her course, in lack of sun and 

star. 
Where icebergs threaten, and the 

sharp reefs are; 
Lift the blind fog on Anticosti's lee 
And Avalon's rock; make populous 

the sea 
Round Grand Manan with eager finny 

swarms, 
Break the long calms, and charm 

away the storms. 



SAMUEL J. TILDEN 

GREYSTONE, AUGUST 4, 1886. 

Once more, O all-adjusting Death ! 
The nation's Pantheon opens wide; 



Once more a common sorrow saith 
A strong, wise man has died. 

Faults doubtless had he. Had we not 
Our own, to question and asperse 

The worth we doubted or forgot 
Until beside his hearse ? 

Ambitious, cautious, yet the man 
To strike down fraud with resolute 
hand; 

A patriot, if a partisan, 
He loved his native land. 

So let the mourning l^ells be rung, 
The banner droop its folds half 
way 

And while the public pen and tongue 
Their fitting tribute pay, 

Shall we not vow above his bier 
To set our feet on party lies, 

And wound no more a living ear 
With words that Death denies ? 




" Oh, for faith like thine, sweet Eva " 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



EVA 

Dky the tears for holy Eva, 
With tlio hlossocl nnf>;els leave her; 
( )f the form so soft and fair 
Give to earth the tender care. 



For the golden locks of Eva 
Ijet the sunny south-land give her 
Flowery pillow of repose, 
Orange-bloom and budding rose. 

In the better home of Eva 

Let the shining ones receive her, 



A SONG OF HARVEST 



269 



With the welcome-voiced psahn, 
Harp of gold and waving palm ! 

All is light and peace with Eva; 
There the darkness cometh never; 
Tears are wiped, and fetters fall, 
And the Lord is all in all. 

Weep no more for happy Eva, 
Wrong and sin no more shall grieve 

her; 
Care and pain and weariness 
Lost in love so measureless. 

Gentle Eva, loving Eva, 
Child confessor, true believer, 
Listener at the Master's knee, 
" Suffer such to come to me." 

Oh, for faith like thine, sweet Eva, 
Lighting all the solemn river. 
And the blessings of the poor 
Wafting to the heavenly shore ! 



A LAY OF OLD TIME 

Written for the Essex County' Agricul- 
tural Fair, and sung at the banquet at New- 
buryport, October 2, 1856. 

One morning of the first sad Fall, 

Poor Adam and his bride 
Sat in the shade of Eden's wall — 

But on the outer side. 

She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit 
For the chaste garb of old; 

He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit 
For Eden's drupes of gold. 

Behind them, smiling in the morn, 
Their forfeit garden lay, 10 

Before them, wild with rock and thorn. 
The desert stretched away. 

They heard the air above them 
fanned, 

A light step on the sward, 
And lo ! they saw before them stand 

The angel of the Lord ! 

"Arise," he said, "why look behind, 

When hope is all before. 
And patient hand and willing mind 

Your loss may yet restore ? 20 



" I leave with you a spell whose power 
Can make tlie desert glad. 

And call around you fruit and flower 
As fair as Eden had. 

"I clothe your hands with power to 
lift 

Tiie curse from off your soil; 
Your very doom shall seem a gift, 

Your loss a gain through Toil. 

" Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees, 
To labor as to play." 30 

White glimmering over Eden's trees 
The angel passed away. 

The pilgrims of tlie world went forth 

Obedient to the word. 
And found where'er they tilled the 
earth 

A garden of the Lord ! 

The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit 
And blushed with plum and pear. 

And seeded grass and trodden root 
Grew sweet beneath their care. 40 

We share our primal parents' fate, 

And, in our turn and day. 
Look back on Eden's sword ed gate 

As sad and lost as they. 

But still for us his native skies 

The pitying Angel leaves, 
And leads through Toil to Paradise 

New Adams and new Eves 1 



A SONG OF HARVEST 

For the Agricultural and Horticultural 
Exhibition at Amesburv and Salisbury, 
September 28, 1858. 

This day, two hundred years a^o, 
The wild grape l)y the river's side. 

And tasteless groundnut trailing low. 
The table of the woods supplied. 

Unknown the apple's red and gold, 
The blushing tint of peach and pear; 

The mirror of the Powow told 
No tale of orchards ripe and rare. 

Wild as the fruits he scorned to till, 
These vales the idle Indian trod; 



70 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Nor knew the glad, creative skill, 
The joy of him who toils with God. 

() Painter of the fruits and flowers! 

We thank Thee for thy wise design 
Wherei)y these human hands of ours 

In >sature's garden work with 
Thine. 

And thanks that from our daily need 
The joy of simple faith is born; 

That he who smites the sunnner weed; 
May trust Thee for the autumn 
corn. 

Give fools tiieir gold, and knaves their 
])ower; 

Let fortune's l)ul)bles rise and fall; 
Who sows a field, or trains a flower, 

Or plants a tree, is more tlian all. 

For he who blesses most is blest; 

And God and man shall own his 
worth 
Who toils to leave at his bequest 

An added beauty to the earth. 

And, soon or late, to all that sow. 
The time of harvest shall be given; 

The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall 
grow, 
If not on earth, at last in heaven. 



KENOZA LAKE 

As Adam did in Paradise, 

To-day the primal right we claim: 
Fair mirror of the woods and skies, 

We give to thee a name. 

Lake of the pickerel ! — let no more 
The echoes answer back, "Great 
Pond," 

But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore 
And watching hills beyond, 

Let Indian ghosts, if such there be 
Who ply unseen their shadowy 
lines. lo 

Call back the ancient name to thee. 
As with the voice of pines. 

The shores we trod as barefoot boys, 
The nutted woods we wandered 
through, 



To friendship, love, and social joys 
We consecrate anew. 

Here shall the tender song be sung, 
And memory's dirges soft and low, 

And wit shall sparkle on the tongue. 
And mirth shall overflow, 20 

Harmless as summer lightning plays 
From a low, hidden cloud by night, 

A light to set the hills ablaze, 
But not a bolt to smite. 

In sunny South and prairied West 
Are exiled hearts remembering still. 

As bees their hive, as birds their nest. 
The homes of Haverhill. 

They join us in our rites to-day; 

And, listening, we may hear, ere- 
long, 30 
From inland lake and ocean bay. 

The echoes of our song. 

Kenoza ! o'er no sweeter lake 

Shall morning break or noon-cloud 
sail, — 

No fairer face than thine shall take 
The sunset's golden veil. 

Long be it ere the tide of trade 

Shall break with harsh-resounding 
din 

The quiet of thy banks of shade, 
And hills that fold thee in. 40 

Still let thy woodlands hide the hare, 
The shy loon sound his trumpet- 
note. 

Wind-weary from his fields of air. 
The wild-goose on thee float. 

Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir. 
Thy beauty our deforming strife; 

Thy woods and waters minister 
The healing of their life. 

And sinless Mirth, from care released. 
Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky, 

Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast si 
The Master's loving eye. 

And when the summer day grows dim, 
And light mists walk thy mimic sea, 

Revive in us tlie thought of Him 
Who walked on Galilee 1 



FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL 



271 




' Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir, 
Thy beauty our deforming strife ' 



FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL 

The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine 
Of fruitful Ceres charm no more; 

The woven wreaths of oak and pine 
Are dust along the Isthmian shore. 

But beauty hath its homage still, 
And nature liolds us still in debt; 

And woman's grace and household 
skill, 
And manhood's toil, are honored yet. 

And we, to-day, amidst our flowers 
And fruits, have come to own again 

The blessings of the summer hours. 
The early and the latter rain; 

To see our Father's hand once more 
Reverse for us the plenteous horn 

Of autumn, filled and running o'er 
With fruit, and flower, and golden 
corn! 

Once more the liberal year laughs out 
O'er richer stores than gems or gold; 

Once more with harvest-song and sheet 
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told. 



Our common mother rests and sings, 
Like Ruth, among her garnered 
sheaves; 
Her lap is full of goodly things, 
Her brow is bright with autumn 
leaves. 

Oh, favors every year made new! 
Oh, gifts with rain and sunshine 
sent! 
The bounty overruns our due, 

The fulness shames our discon- 
tent. 

We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom 
on; 

We murmur, but the corn-ears fill, 
We choose the shadow, l)ut the sun 

That casts it shines behind us still. 

God gives us with our rugged soil 
The power to make it Eden-fair, 

And richer fruits to crown our toil 
Than sunnncr-wedded islands bear. 

Who murmurs at his lot to-dav ? 
Who scorns his native fruit and 
bloom ? 



272 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Or sighs for dainties far away, 

Beside the bounteous board of 
home? 

Thank Heaven, instead, that Free- 
dom's arm 
Can change a rocky soil to gold, — 
Tiiat brave and generous Uves can 
warm 
A clime with northern ices cold. 

And let these altars, wreathed with 
flowers 

And piled \nth fruits, awake again 
Thanksgivings for the golden hours, 

The early and the latter rain 1 



THE QUAKER ALUMNI 

From the well-springs of Hudson, the 

sea-cliffs of Maine, 
Grave men, sober matrons, you gather 

again; 
And, with hearts warmer grown as 

your heads grow more cool. 
Play over the old game of going to 

school. 

All your strifes and vexations, your 
whims and complaints, 

(You were not saints yourselves, if the 
children of saints !) 

All your petty self-seekings and rival- 
ries done. 

Round the dear Alma Mater your 
hearts beat as one ! 

How widely soe'er you have strayed 

from the fold, 
Though your "thee" has grown 

" you," and your drab blue and 

gold, 10 

To the old friendly speech and the 

garb's sober form. 
Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, 

you warm. 

But, the first greetings over, you 
glance round the hall; 

Your hearts call the roll, but they an- 
swer not all: 

Through tiie turf green above them 
the dead cannot hear; 

Name by name, in the silence, falls sad 
as a tear ! 



In love, let us trust, they were sum- 
moned so soon 

From the morning of life, while we toil 
through its noon; 

They were frail like ourselves, they 
had needs like our own, 

And they rest as we rest in God's 
mercy alone. 20 

Unchanged by our changes of spirit 

and frame, 
Past, now, and henceforward the Lord 

is the same; 
Though we sink in the darkness, His 

arms break our fall, 
And in death as in life. He is Father of 

all! 

We are older: our footsteps, so light 

in the play 
Of the far-away school-time, move 

slower to-day ; — • 
Here a beard touched with frost, there 

a bald, shining crown. 
And beneath the cap's border gray 

mingles with brown. 

But faith should be cheerful, and trust 

should be glad. 
And our follies and sins, not our years, 

make us sad. 30 

Should the heart closer shut as the 

bonnet grows prim. 
And the face grow in length as the hat 

grows in brim ? 

Life is brief, duty grave; but, with 

rain-folded wings, 
Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful 

heart sings; 
And we, of all others, have reason to 

pay 
The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on 

our way; 

For the counsels that turned from the 
follies of youth; 

For the beauty of patience, the white- 
ness of truth; 

For the wounds of rebuke, when love 
tempered its edge; 

For the household's restraint, and the 
discipUne's hedge; 40 

For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed 
to the least 



THE QUAKER ALUMNI 



273 



Of the creatures of God, whether hu- 
man or beast, 

Bringing hope to the poor, lending 
strength to the frail, 

In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, 
and jail; 

For a womanhood higher and holier, 

by all 
Her knowledge of good, than was Eve 

ere her fall, — 
Whose task-work of duty moves 

lightly as play, 
Serene as the moonlight and warm as 

the day; 

And, yet more, for the faith which 

embraces the whole. 
Of the creeds of the ages the life and 

the soul, so 

Wherein letter and spirit the same 

channel run. 
And man has not severed what God 

has made one ! 

For a sense of the Goodness revealed 

everywhere, 
As sunshine impartial, and free as the 

air; 
For a trust in humanity. Heathen or 

Jew, 
And a hope for all darkness the Light 

shineth through. 

Who scoffs at our birthright ? — the 
words of the seers, 

And the songs of the bards in the twi- 
light of years, 

All the foregleams of wisdom in santon 
and sage, 

In prophet and priest, are our true 
heritage. 60 

The Word which the reason of Plato 

discerned ; 
The truth, as whose symbol the 

Mithra-fire burned; 
The soul of the world which the Stoic 

but guessed, 
In the Light Universal the Quaker 

confessed ! 

No honors of war to our worthies 

belong; 
Their plain stem of life never flowered 

into song; 



But the fountains they opened still 
gush by the way, 

And the world for their healing is bet- 
ter to-day. 

He who lies where the minster's 
groined arches curve down 

To the tomb-crowded transept of Eng- 
land's renown, 70 

The glorious essayist, by genius en- 
throned. 

Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all 
owned, — 

Who through the world's pantheon 

walked in his pride. 
Setting new statues up, thrusting old 

ones aside, 
And in fiction tlie pencils of history 

dipped, 
To gild o'er or blacken each saint in 

his crypt, — 

How vainly he labored to sully with 

The white Inist of Penn, in the niche of 

his fame ! 
Self-will is self-wounding, perversity 

blind: 
On himself fell the stain for the 

Quaker designed ! 80 

For the sake of liis true-liearted fatlier 
before him; 

For the sake of the dear Quaker mo- 
ther that bore liiin; 

For the sake of liis gifts, and the works 
that outlive him, 

And his brave words for freedom, we 
freely forgive him ! 

There are those who take note tliat our 

numbers are small, — 
New Gibbons who write our decline 

and our fall; 
But the Lord of the seq^-field takes 

care of His own, 
And the world shall yet reap what our 

sowers have sown. 

The last of the sect to his fathers may 

Leaving only his coat for some Bar- 
num to show; 9° 



274 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



1 



But the truth will outlive him, and 

broaden with years, 
Till the false dies away, and the wrong 

disappears. 

Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight 

sinks the stone, 
In the deep sea of time, but the circles 

sweep on, 
Till the low-rippled murmurs along 

the shores run, 
And the dark and dead waters leap 

glad in the sun. 

Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease, 
to forget 

To the martyrs of Truth and of Free- 
dom our debt ? — 

Hide their words out of sight, like the 
garb that they wore, 

And for Barclay's Apology offer one 
more? loo 

Shall we fawn round the priestcraft 

that glutted the shears. 
And festooned the stocks with our 

grandfathers' ears? 
Talk of Woolman's unsoundness? 

count Penn heterodox ? 
And take Cotton Mather in place of 

George Fox? 

Make our preachers war-chaplains? 

quote Scripture to take 
The hunted slave back, for Onesimus' 

sake ? 
Go to burning church-candles, and 

chanting in choir, 
And on the old meeting-house stick up 

a spire ? 

No! the old paths we'll keep until 

better are shown, 
Credit good where we find it, abroad 

or our own; no 

And while " Lo here" and " Lo there" 

the multitude call. 
Be true to ourselves, and do justice to all. 

The good round about us we need not 

refuse. 
Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews ; 
But why shirk the badge which our 

fathers liave worn. 
Or beg the world's pardon for having 

been born? 



We need not pray over the Pharisee's 
prayer. 

Nor claim that our wisdom is Benja- 
min's share; 

Truth to us and to others is equal and 
one: 

Shall we bottle the free air, or hoard 
up the sun? 120 

Well know we our birthright may serve 
but to show 

How the meanest of weeds in the rich- 
est soil grow; 

But w^e need not disparage the good 
which we hold; 

Though the vessels be earthen, the 
treasure is gold ! 

Enough and too much of the sect and 

the name. 
What matters our label, so truth be 

our aim ? 
The creed may be wrong, but the life 

may be true. 
And hearts beat the same under drab 

coats or blue. 

So the man be a man, let him worship, 
at will. 

In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's 
hill. 130 

When she makes up her jewels, what 
cares yon good town 

For the Baptist of Wayland, the Qua- 
ker of Brown ? 

And this green, favored island, so fresh 

and sea-blown, 
When she counts up the worthies her 

annals have known. 
Never waits for the pitiful gaugers of 

sect 
To measure her love, and mete out her 

respect. 

Three shades at this moment seem 

walking her strand, 
Each with head halo-crowned, and 

with palms in his hand, — 
Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, 

smiling serene 
On prelate and puritan, Channing is 

seen. 140 

One holy name bearing, no longer they 
need 



OUR RIVER 



275 



Credentials of party, and pass- words 
of creed; 

The new song they sing hath a three- 
fold accord, 

And they own one baptism, one faith, 
and one Lord ! 

But the golden sands run out: occa- 
sions like these 

Glide swift into shadow, like sails on 
the seas: 

While we sport with the mosses and 
pebbles ashore, 

They lessen and fade, and we see 
them no more. 

Forgive me, dear friends, if my va- 
grant thoughts seem 

Like a school-boy's who idles and 
plays with his theme. iso 

Forgive the light measure whose 
changes display 

The sunshine and rain of our brief 
April day. 

There are moments in life when the lip 

and the eye 
Try the question of whether to smile 

or to cry; 
And scenes and reunions that prompt 

like our own 
The tender in feehng, the playful in 

tone. 

I, who never sat down with the boys 
and the girls 

At the feet of your Slocums, and Cart- 
lands, and Earles, — 

By courtesy only permitted to lay 

On your festival's altar my poor gift, 
to-day, — 160 

I would joy in your joy : let me have a 
friend's part 

In the warmth of your welcome of 
hand and of heart, — 

On your play-ground of boyhood un- 
bend the brow's care. 

And shift the old burdens our shoul- 
ders must bear. 

Long live the good School ! giving out 
year by year 

Recruits to true manhood and wo- 
manhood dear: 



Brave boys, modest maidens, in 

beauty sent forth. 
The living epistles and proof of its 

worth ! 

In and out let the young life as stead- 
ily flow 

As in broad Narragansett tiie tides 
come and go; 170 

And its sons and its daughters in 
prairie and town 

Remember its honor, and guard its 
renown. 

Not vainly the gift of its founder was 

made; 
Not prayerless the stones of its corner 

were laid: 
The blessing of Him whom in secret 

they sought 
Has owned the good work which the 

fathers have wrought. 

To Him be the glory forever ! We bear 
To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat 

with the tare. 
What we lack in our work may He 

find in our will, 
And winnow in mercy our good from 

the ill! 180 



OUR RIVER 

FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT " THE 
laurels" on THE MERRIMAC 

Once more on yonder laurelled 
height 

The summer flowers liave budded ; 
Once more with suminor's golden 
light 

The vales of home are flooded; 
And once more, i)y tlie grace of Him 

Of every good the Giver, 
We sing upon its wooded rim 

The praises of our river: 

Its pines above, its waves below. 

The west-wind down it blowing. 10 
As fair as when the young Hrissot 

Beheld it seaward flowing. — 
And bore its memory o'er the deep, 

To soothe the martyr's sadness. 
And fresco, in his troubled sleep, 

His prison-walls with gladness. 



276 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



We know the world is rich with 
streams 
Renowned in song and story, 
Whose niiisic murmurs through our 
dreams 
C)f human love and glory : 20 

We know that Arno's banks are 
fair, 
And Rhine has castled shadows, 
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr 
Go surging down their meadows. 

But while, unpictured and unsung 

By painter or by poet. 
Our river waits the tuneful tongue 

And cunning liand to show it, — 
We only know the fond skies lean 

Above it, warm with blessing, 30 
And the sweet soul of our Undine 

Awakes to our caressing. 

No fickle sun-god holds the flocks 

That graze its shores in keep- 
ing; 
No icy kiss of Dian mocks 

The youth beside it sleeping: 
Our Christian river loveth most 

The beautiful and human; 
The heathen streams of Naiads boast. 

But ours of man and woman. 40 

The miner in his cabin hears 

The ripple we are hearing; 
It whispers soft to homesick ears 

Around the settler's clearing: 
In Sacramento's vales of corn. 

Or Santee's bloom of cotton, 
Our river by its valley-horn 

Was never yet forgotten. 

The drum rolls loud, the bugle fills 

The summer air with clangor; 50 
The war-storm shakes the solid hills 

^ Beneatli its tread of anger; 
Young eyes that last year smiled in 
o\irs 
Now point tlie rifle's barrel, 
And hands then stained with fruits 
and flowers 
Bear redder stains of quarrel. 

But blue skies smile, and flowers 
bloom on, 

And rivers .still keep flowing. 
The dear God still his rain and sun 

On good and ill bestowing. 60 



His pine-trees whisper, "Trust and 
wait!" 

His flowers are prophesying 
That all we dread of change or fate 

His love is underlying. 



And 



thou, O 
more 



Mountain-born ! — no 



We ask the wise Allotter 
Than for the firmness of thy shore. 

The calmness of thy water. 
The cheerful lights that overlay 

Thy rugged slopes with beauty, 70 
To match our spirits to our day 

And make a joy of duty. 



REVISITED 

READ AT "the LAURELS," ON THE ' 
MERRIMAC, 6th MONTH, 1865. 

The roll of drums and the bugle's 
wailing 
Vex the air of our vales no more; 
The spear is beaten to hooks of prun- 
ing. 
The share is the sword the soldier 
wore ! 

Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river, 
Under thy banks of laurel bloom; 

Softly and sweet, as the hour beseem- 
eth, 
Sing us the songs of peace and home. 

Let all the tenderer voices of nature 
Temper the triumph and chasten 
mirth, lo 

Full of the infinite love and pity 
For fallen martyr and darkened 
hearth. 

But to Him who gives us beauty for 

ashes, 

And the oil of joy for mourning long. 

Let thy hills give "thanks, and all thy 

waters 

Break into jubilant waves of song ! 

Bring us the airs of hills and forests. 

The sweet aroma of birch and pine. 

Give us a waft of the north-wind 

laden 

With sweetbrier odors and breath of 

kine ! 20 



REVISITED 




277 



" But blue skies smile, 
And rivers still keep 

Bring us the purple of mountain sun- 
sets, 
Shadows of clouds that rake the 
hills, 
The green repose of thy Plymouth 
meadows, 
The gleam and ripple of Campton 
rills. 

Lead us away in shadow and sunshine, 
Slaves of fancy, through all thy 
miles. 

The winding ways of Pemigewasset, 
And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles. 

Shatter in sunshine over thy ledges, 
Laugh in thy plunges from fall to 
fall; 30 



and flowers bloom on, 
flowing " 

Play with thy fringes of elms, and 
darken 
Under the shade of the mountain 
wall. 

The cradle-song of thy hillside foun- 
tains 

Here in thy glory and strengtli repeat; 
Give us a taste of thy upland music, 

Show us the dance of thy silver feet. 

Into thy dutiful life of uses 

Pour the music and weave the flow- 
ers: 
With the song of birds and l)loom of 
meadows 
Lighten and gladden thy heart and 
ours. 40 



278 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Sing on ! bring down, O lowland river, 
The joy of the hills to the waiting 
sea; 
The wealtli of the vales, the pomp of 
mountains, 
The breath of the woodlands, bear 
with thee. 

Here, in the calm of thy seaward val- 
ley, 
Mirth and labor shall hold their 
truce; 
Dance of water and mill of grinding. 
Both are beauty and both are use. 

Type of the Northland's strength and 
glory, 
Pride and hope of our home and 
race, — 50 

Freedom lending to rugged labor 
Tints of beauty and lines of grace. 

Once again, beautiful river. 

Hear our greetings and take our 
thanks; 
Hitlier we come, as Eastern pilgrims 
Throng to the Jordan's sacred 
banks. 

For thougli Ijy the Master's feet un- 
trodden. 
Though never His word has stilled 
thy waves. 
Well for us may thy shores be holy, 
Witli Christian altars and saintly 
graves. 60 

And well may we own thy hint and 
token 
Of fairer valleys and streams than 
these. 
Where the rivers of God are full of 
water. 
And full of sap are His healing trees ! 



"THE LAURELS" 

AT THE TWENTIETH AND LAST ANNI- 
VERSARY 

From these wild rocks I look to-day 
O'er leagues of dancing waves, and 
see 

The far, low coast-line stretch away 
To where our river meets the sea. 



The light wind blowing off the land 
Is burdened with old voices; 
through 

Shut eyes I see how lip and hand 
The greeting of old days renew. 

friends whose hearts still keep their 

prime. 
Whose bright example warms and 
cheers. 
Ye teach us how to smile at Time, 
And set to music all his years ! 

1 thank you for sweet summer days. 

For pleasant memories lingering 
long, 
For joyful meetings, fond delays, 
And ties of friendship woven strong. 

As for the last time, side by side, 
You tread the paths familiar grown, 

I reach across the severing tide, 
And blend my farewells with your 
own. 

Make room, O river of our home ! 

For other feet in place of ours, 
And in the summers yet to come. 

Make glad another Feast of Flow- 
ers! 

Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep, 
The pleasant ' pictures thou hast 
seen; 

Forget thy lovers not, but keep 
Our memory like thy laurels green. 



JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC 

O DWELLERS in the stately towns. 

What come ye out to see ? 
This common earth, this common 

This water flowing free? 

As gayly as these kalmia flowers 
Your door-yard blossoms spring; 

As sweetly as these wild-wood birds 
Your caged minstrels sing. 

You find but common bloom and 
green 

The rippling river's rune, 10 

The beauty which is everywhere 

Beneath the skies of June; 



JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC 



279 




" Yet here no evil thought finds place, 
Nor foot profane comes in." 



The Hawkswood oaks, the storm-torn 
plumes 

Of old pine-forest kings. 
Beneath whose century-woven shade 

Deer Island's mistress sings. 

And here are pictured Artichoke, 
And Curson's bowery mill; 

And Pleasant Valley smiles between 
The river and the hill. 20 

You know full well these banks of 
bloom. 

The upland's wavy line. 
And how the sunshine tips with fire 

The needles of the pine. 

Yet, like some old remembered psalm, 

Or sweet, familiar face, 
Not less because of commonness 

You love the day and place. 



And not in vain in this soft air 

Shall hard-strung nerves relax, .?o 

Not all in vain the o'erworn bruin 
Forego its daily tax. 

The lust of power, the greed of gain 
Have all the year their own; 

The haunting demons well may let 
Our one bright day alone. 

Unheeded let the newsboy call, 

Aside the ledger lay: 
The Avorld will keep its treadmill 
step 

Though we fall out to-day. 40 



The truants of life's Aveary school, 
Without excuse from thrift 

We change for once the gains 
toil 
For God's unpurchased gift. 



of 



28o 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



From ceiled rooms, from silent Ijooks, 
From crowded car and town, 

Dear Mother Earth, upon thy lap 
We lay our tired heads down. 

Cool, summer wind, our heated brows; 

Blue river, through the green 50 
Of clustering pines, refresh the eyes 

Which all too much have seen. 

For us these pleasant woodhind ways 
Are tlironged with memories old. 

Have felt the grasp of friendly hands 
And heard love's story told. 

A sacred presence overbroods 
The earth whereon we meet; 

These winding forest-paths are trod 
By more than mortal feet. 60 

Old friends called from us by the 
voice 

Which they alone could hear, 
From mystery to mystery, 

From life to life, draw near. 

More closely for the sake of them 
Each other's hands we press; 

Our voices take from them a tone 
Of deeper tenderness. 

Our joy is theirs, their trust is ours. 
Alike below, above, 70 

Or here or there, about us fold 
The arms of one great love ! 

We ask to-day no countersign, 

No party names we own; 
Unlabelled, individual. 

We bring ourselves alone. 

What cares the unconventioned wood 
For pass-words of the town ? 

The sound of fashion's shibboleth 
The laughing waters drown. 80 

Here cant forgets his dreary tone, 

And care his face forlorn; 
The liberal air and sunshine laugh 

The bigot's zeal to scorn. 

From manhood's weary shoulder falls 

His load of selfish cares; 
And woman takes her rights as flow- 
ers 

And brooks and birds take theirs. 



The license of the happy woods, 
The brook's release are ours; go 

The freedom of the unshamed wind 
Among the glad-eyed flowers. 

Yet here no evil thought finds 
place, 

Nor foot profane comes in; 
Our grove, like that of Samothrace, 

Is set apart from sin. 

We walk on holy ground; above 

A sky more holy smiles; 
The chant of the beatitudes 

Swells down these leafy aisles. 100 

Thanks to the gracious Providence 
That brings us here once more; 

For memories of the good behind 
And hopes of good before ! 

And if, unknown to us, sweet days 
Of June like this must come, 

Unseen of us these laurels clothe 
The river-banks with bloom; 

And these green paths must soon be 
trod 

By other feet than ours, no 

Full long may annual pilgrims come 

To keep the Feast of Flowers; 

The matron be a girl once more, 

The bearded man a boy, 
And we, in heaven's eternal June, 

Be glad for earthly joy ! 



HYMN 

FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR 
king's house OF WORSHIP, 1864 

Amidst these glorious works of Thine, 
The solemn minarets of the pine, 
And awful Shasta's icy shrine, — 

Where swell Thy hymns from wave 

and gale, 
And organ-thunders never fail, 
Behind the cataract's silver veil, — 

Our puny walls to Thee we raise. 
Our poor reed-music sounds Thy 

praise: 
Forgive, O Lord, our childish ways ! 



A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION 



281 



For, kneeling on these altar-stairs, 10 
We urge Thee not with selfish prayers, 
Nor murmur at our daily cares. 

Before Thee, in an evil day. 

Our country's bleeding heart we 

lay. 
And dare not ask Thy hand to stay; 

But, through the war-cloud, pray to 

Thee 
For union, but a union free. 
With peace that comes of purity ! 

That Thou wilt bare Thy arm to 

save 
And, smiting through this Red Sea 

wave, 20 

Make broad a pathway for the slave ! 

For us, confessing all our need, 
We trust nor rite nor word nor 

deed. 
Nor yet the broken staff of creed. 

Assured alone that Thou art good 
To each, as to the multitude, 
Eternal Love and Fatherhood, — 

Weak, sinful, blind, to Thee we kneel, 
Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and 

feel 
Our weakness is our strong appeal. 30 

So, by these Western gates of Even 
We wait to see with Thy forgiven 
The opening Golden Gate of Heaven ! 

Suffice it now. In time to be 
Shall holier altars rise to Thee, — 
Thy Church our broad humanity ! 

White flowers of love its walls shall 

climb. 
Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime, 
Its days shall all be holy time. 

A sweeter song shall then be heard, — 
The music of the world's accord 41 
Confessing Christ, the Inward Word ! 

That song shall swell from shore to 
shore. 

One hope, one faith, one love, re- 
store 

The seamless robe that Jesus wore. 



HYMN 



FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT 
GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY 
OF A MOTHER 

Thou dwellest not, O Lord of all ! 

In temples which thy children raise; 
Our work to Thine is mean and small, 

And brief to Thy eternal days. 

Forgive the weakness and the pride. 
If marred thereby our gift may be. 

For love, at least, has sanctified 
The altar that we rear to thee. 

The heart and not the hand has 
wrought 

From sunken base to tower above 
The image of a tender thougiit, 

The memory of a deathless love ! 

And though sliould never sound of 
speech 

Or organ echo from its wall, 
Its stones would pious lessons teach, 

Its shade in benedictions fall. 

Here should the dove of peace be 
found, 
And blessings and not curses given; 
Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound 
The mingled loves of earth and hea- 
ven. 

Thou, who didst soothe with dying 
breath 
The dear one watching by Tiiy 
cross, 
Forgetful of the pains of death 
In sorrow for her mighty loss, 

In memory of that tender claim, 
O Mother-born, the offering take, 

And make it wortliy of Thy name. 
And bless it for a mother's sake 1 



A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION 

AT THE president's LEVEE, BROWN 
UNIVERSITY, 29th GtH MONTH, 

1870 

To-DAY the plant l)y Williams set 
Its summer bloom discloses; 



282 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



The wilding sweethrier of his prayers 
Is crowned witli cultured roses. 

Once more the Island State repeats 
The lesson that he taught her, 

And hinds his pearl of charity 

I'pon her brown-locked daughter. 

Is 't fancy that he watches still 

His Providence plantations? lo 

That still the careful Founder takes 
A part on these occasions ? 

Methinks I see that reverend form, 
Which all of us so well know: 

He rises up to speak; he jogs 
The presidential elbow. 

" Good friends," he says, " you reap a 
field 

I sowed in self-denial, 
For toleration had its griefs 

And charity its trial. 20 

"Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas 
More, 

To him must needs be given 
Who hearetii heresy and leaves 

The heretic to Heaven ! 

" I hear again the snuffled tones, 

I see in dreary vision 
Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores, 

And prophets with a mission. 

"Each zealot thrust before my eyes 
His Scripture-garbled label; 30 

All creeds were shouted in my ears 
As with the tongues of Babel. 

"Scourged at one cart-tail, each de- 
nied 

The hope of every other; 
Each martyr shook his branded fist 

At the conscience of his brother ! 

" How cleft the dreary drone of man 
The shriller pipe of woman, 

As Gorton led his saints elect. 

Who h(>ld all things in common! 40 

" Their gay robes trailed in ditch and 
swamp. 

And torn by thorn and thicket. 
The dancing-girls of Merry Mount 

Came dragging to my wicket. 



"Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of ears; 

Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly; 
And Antinomians, free of law, 

Whose very sins were holy. 

"Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Mon- 
archists 
Of stripes and bondage braggarts, 50 
Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics 
snatched 
From Puritanic fagots. 

"And last, not least, the Quakers 
came. 
With tongues still sore from burn- 
ing, 
The Bay State's dust from off their 
feet 
Before my threshold spurning; 

" A motley host, the Lord's debris, 
Faith's odds and ends together; 

Well might I shrink from guests with 
lungs 
Tough as their breeches leather: 60 

" If, when the hangman at their heels 
Came, rope in hand to catch them, 

I took the himted outcasts in, 
I never sent to fetch them. 

" I fed, but spared them not a whit; 

I gave to all who walked in, 
Not clams and succotash alone. 

But stronger meat of doctrine. 

" I proved the prophets false, I pricked 
The bubble of perfection, 70 

And clapped upon their inner light 
The snuffers of election. 

" And looking backward on my times, 

This credit I am taking; 
I kept each sectary's dish apart, 

No spiritual chowder making. 

" Where now the blending signs of sect 
Would puzzle their assorter. 

The dry-shod Quaker kept the land, 
The Baptist held the water. 80 

" A common coat now serves for both, 
The hat's no more a fixture; 

And which was wet and which was 
dry, 
Who knows in such a mixture ? 



CHICAGO 



283 



"Well! He who fashioned Peter's 
dream 

To bless them all is able; 
And bird and beast and creeping thing 

Make clean upon His table ! 

" I walked by my own light; but when 
The ways of faith divided, 90 

Was I to force unwilling feet 
To tread the path that I did ? 

" I touched the garment-hem of truth, 
Yet saw not all its splendor; 

I knew enough of doubt to feel 
For every conscience tender. 

'' God left men free of choice, as when 
His Eden-trees were planted; 

Because they chose amiss, should I 
Deny the gift He granted? 100 

"So, with a common sense of need, 
Our common weakness feeling, 

I left them with myself to God 
And His all-gracious dealing ! 

"I kept His plan whose rain and 
sun 

To tare and wheat are given; 
And if the ways to hell were free, 

I left them free to heaven!" 

Take heart with us, O man of old. 
Soul-freedom's brave confessor, no 

So love of God and man wax strong. 
Let sect and creed be lesser. 

The jarring discords of thy day 
In ours one hymn are swelling; 

The wandering feet, the severed paths, 
All seek our Father's dwelling. 

And slowly learns the world the truth 
That makes us all thy debtor, — 

That holy life is more than rite. 
And spirit more than letter; 120 

That they who differ pole-wide serve 
Perchance the common Master, 

And other sheep He hath than they 
Who graze one narrow pasture ! 

For truth's worst foe is he who claims 

To act as God's avenger, 
And deems, beyond his sentry-beat, 

The crystal walls in danger I 



Who sets for heresy his trails 

Of verbal quirk and quibble, i.-.o 

And weeds the garden of the Lord 
With Satan's borrowed dibble. 

To-day our hearts like organ kevs 
One Master's touch are feeling; 

The branches of a common \'ine 
Have only leaves of healing. 

Co-workers, yet from varied fields, 
We share this restful nooning; 

The Quaker with the Baptist here 
Believes in close communing. 140 

Forgive, dear saint, the playful tone, 
Too light for thy deserving; 

Thanks for thy generous faith in 
man, 
Thy trust in God unswerving. 

Still echo in the hearts of men 
The words that thou hast spoken ; 

No forge of hell can weld again 
The fetters thou hast broken. 

The pilgrim needs a pass no more 
From Roman or Genevan; 150 

Thought-free, no ghostly tollman 
keeps 
Henceforth the road to Heaven ! 



CHICAGO 

Men said at vespers: " All is well ! " 

In one wild night the city fell; 

Fell shrines of prayer and marts of 

gain 
Before the fiery hurricane. 

On threescore spires had sunset shone. 
Where ghastly sunrise looked on none. 
Men clasped each other's hands, and 

said: 
"The City of the West is dead I" 

Brave hearts who fought, in slow re- 
treat, 

The fiends of fire from street to street, 

Turned, powerless, to the blinding 
glare, 

The dumb defiance of despair. 

A sudden impulse thrilled each wire 
That signalled round that sea of fire; 



284 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Swift words of cheer, warm lieart- 

throbs came; 
In tears of pity died the flame ! 

From East, from West, from South 

and North, 
The messages of hope shot forth, 
And, underneath the severing wave, 
The world, full-handed, reached to 

save. 

Fair seemed tlie old; but fairer still 
The new, the dreary void shall fill 
With dearer homes than those o'er- 

thrown, 
For love shall lay each corner-stone. 

Rise, stricken city ! from thee throw 
Tlie aslien sackcloth of tliy woe; 
And build, as to Aniphion's strain, 
To songs of cheer thy walls again ! 

How shrivelled in tliy hot distress 
The primal sin of selfishness ! 
How instant rose, to take thy part. 
The angel in the human heart ! 

Ah ! not in vain the flames that tossed 

Above thy dreadful holocaust; 

The Christ again has preached through 

thee 
The Gospel of Humanity ! 

Then lift once more thy towers on high, 
And fret with spires the western sky. 
To tell that God is yet with us, 
And love is still miraculous ! 



KINSMAN 

DIED AT THE ISLAND OF PANAY (PHIL- 
IPPINE group), aged nineteen 

YE.\RS 

Where ceaseless Spring her garland 
twines, 

As sweetly shall the loved one rest. 
As if beneath the whispering pines 

And maple shadows of the West. 

Ye mourn, O hearts of liome ! for him, 
^ But, haply, mourti ye not alone; 
For him shall far-off eyes be dim. 
And pity speak in tongues un- 
known. 



There needs no graven line to give 
The story of his blameless youth; 

All hearts shall throb intuitive. 

And nature guess the simple truth. 

The very meaning of his name 
Shall many a tender tribute win; 

The stranger own his sacred claim. 
And all the world shall be his kin. 

And there, as here, on main and isle, 
The dews of holy peace shall fall. 

The same sweet heavens above him 
smile 
And God's dear love be over all ! 



THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF 
LONGWOOD 

With fifty years between you and 
your well-kept wedding vow, 

The Golden Age, old friends of mine, 
is not a fable now. 

And, sweet as has life's vintage been 
through all your pleasant past, 

Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the 
best wine is the last ! 

Again before me, with your names, 
fair Chester's landscape comes. 

Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, 
and quaint, stone-builded 
homes. 

The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten 
slopes, the boscage green and 
soft. 

Of which their poet sings so well from 
towered Cedarcroft. 

And lo! from all the country-side 
come neighbors, kith and kin; 

From city, hamlet, farm-house old, 
the wedding guests come in. 10 

And they who, without scrip or purse, 
mob-hunted, travel- worn. 

In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as 
victors now return. 

Older and slower, yet the same, files in 

the long array, 
And hearts are light "and eyes are glad, 

though heads are badger-gray. 



LEXINGTON 



285 



The fire-tried men of Thirty-eight who 

saw with me the fall, 
Midst roaring flames and shouting 

mob, of Pennsylvania Hall; 

And they of Lancaster who turned the 
cheeks of tyrants pale, 

Singing of freedom through the grates 
of Moyamensing jail ! 

And haply with them, all unseen, old 
comrades, gone before. 

Pass, silently as shadows pass, within 
your open door, — 20 

The eagle face of Lindley Coates, 
brave Garrett's daring zeal. 

The Christian grace of Pennock, the 
steadfast heart of Neal. 

Ah me! beyond all power to name, 
the worthies tried and true. 

Grave men, fair women, youth and 
maid, pass by in hushed review. 

Of varying faiths, a common cause 
fused all their hearts in one. 

God give them now, whate'er their 
names, the peace of duty done ! 

How gladly would I tread again the 
old-remembered places. 

Sit down beside your hearth once more 
and look in the dear old faces ! 

And thank you for the lessons your 
fifty years are teaching, 29 

For honest lives that louder speak 
than half our noisy preaching; 

For your steady faith and courage in 
that dark and evil time. 

When the Golden Rule was treason 
and to feed the hungry crime; 

For the poor slave's house of refuge 

when the hounds were on his 

track. 
And saint and sinner, church and 

state, joined hands to send him 

back. 

Blessings upon you ! — What you did 
for each sad, suffering one, 

So homeless, faint, and naked, unto 
our Lord was done ! 



Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales 
and Longwood's bowery ways 

The mellow sunset of your lives, 
friends of my early days. 

May many more of quiet years be 

added to your sum. 
And, late at last, in tenderest love, the 

beckoning angel come. 40 

Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are 
there, alike below, above; 

Our friends are now in eitlier world, 
and love is sure of love. 



HYMN 

FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH 
CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA 

All things are Thine : no gift have we, 
Lord of all gifts, to offer Thee; 
And hence with grateful hearts to-day. 
Thy own before Thy feet we lay. 

Thy will was in the builders' thought; 
Thy hand unseen amidst us wrought; 
Through mortal motive, scheme and 

plan. 
Thy wise eternal purpose ran. 

No lack Thy perfect fulness knew; 
For human needs and longings grew 
This house of prayer, this home of 

rest. 
In the fair garden of the West. 

In weakness and in want we call 
On Thee for whom the heavens are 

small ; 
Thy glory is Thy children's good. 
Thy joy Thy tender Fatherhood. 

O Father! deign these walls to bless, 
Fill with Thy love their emptiness, 
And let their door a gateway be 
To lead us from ourselves to Thee 1 



LEXINGTON 

1775 

No Berserk thirst of blood had they, 
No battle-joy was theirs, who set 



286 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Against the alien bayonet 
Their homespun breasts in that old 
day. 

Their feet had trodden peaceful ways; 
They loved not strife, they 

dreaded pain; 
Thev saw not, what to us is plain, 
That God would make man's wrath 
His praise. 8 

No seers were they, but simple men; 
Its vast results the future hid: 
The meaning of the work they did 

Was strange and dark and doubtful 
then. 

Swift as their summons came they 
left 
The plough mid-furrow standing 

still, 
The half-ground corn grist in the 
mill, 
The spade in earth, the axe in cleft. 

They went where duty seemed to call, 
They scarcely asked the reason 

why; 
They only knew they could but 
die, 
And death was not the worst of all ! 20 

Of man for man the sacrifice. 

All that was theirs to give, they 

gave. 
The flowers that blossomed from 
their grave 
Have sown themselves beneath all 
skies. 

Their death-shot shook the feudal 
tower, 
And shattered slaverv's chain as 

well; 
On the sky's dome, as on a bell. 
Its echo struck the world's great hour. 

That fateful echo is not dumb: 

The nations listening to its sound 
Wait, from a century's vantage- 
ground, 31 

The holier triumphs yet to come, — 

The bridal time of Law and Love, 
The gladness of the world's re- 
lease. 



When, war-sick, at the feet of 
Peace 
The hawk shall nestle with the 
dove ! — 

The golden age of brotherhood 
Unknown to other rivalries 
Than of the mild humanities. 

And gracious interchange of good, 40 

When closer strand shall lean to 
strand. 
Till meet, beneath saluting flags, 
The eagle of our mountain-crags, 

The lion of our Motherland ! 



THE LIBRARY 

SUNG AT THE OPENING OF THE HAVER- 
HILL LIBRARY, NOVEMBER 11, 1875 

"Let there be light!" God spake 

of old. 
And over chaos dark and cold. 
And through the dead and formless 

frame 
Of nature, life and order came. 

Faint was the light at first that 

shone 
On giant fern and mastodon, 
On half-formed plant and beast of 

prey, 
And man as rude ana wild as they. 

Age after age, like waves, o'erran 
The earth, uplifting brute and man; 
And mind, at length, in symbols 

dark 
Its meanings traced on stone and 

bark. 

On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought 

roll, 
On plastic clay and leathern scroll, 
Man wrote his thoughts; the ages 

passed. 
And lo ! the Press was found at last ! 

Then dead souls woke; the thoughts 

of men 
Whose bones were dust revived 

again ; 
The cloi-ster's silence found a tongue, 
Old prophets spake, old poets sung. 



THE LIBRARY 



287 




" They went where duty seemed to call " 



And here, to-day, the dead look down; 
The kings of mind again we crown; 
We hear the voices lost so long. 
The sage's word, the sibyl's song. 

Here Greek and Roman find them- 
selves 
Alive along these crowded shelves; 



And Shakespeare treads again his 

staffe 
And Chaucer paints anew his age. 

As if some Pantheon's inarblos broke 
Theirstonvtrancp.ancllivechmdspoko, 
Life thrills along the alcoved hall. 
The lords of thought await our call ! 



288 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



"I WAS A STRANGER AND YE 
TOOK ME IN" 

'Neath skies that winter never knew 
' The air was full of light and balm, 
And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew 
Through orange bloom and groves 
< of palm. 

^ • '^^ A stra^iger from the frozen North, 

Who sought the fount of health in 
vain. 
Sank homeless on the alien earth, 
And breathed the languid air with 
pain. 

God's angel came ! The tender shade 
Of pity made her blue eye dim; 

Against her woman's breast she laid 
The drooping, fainting head of him. 

She bore him to a pleasant room, 
Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea 
air, 

And watched beside his bed, for whom 
His far-off sisters might not care. 

She fanned his feverish brow and 
smoothed 
Its lines of pain with tenderest 
touch. 
With holy hymn and prayer she 
soothed 
The trembling soul that feared so 
much. 

Through her the peace that passeth 
sight 
Came to him, as he lapsed away 
As one whose troubled dreams of 
night 
Slide slowly into tranquil day. 

The sweetness of the Land of Flowers 
Upon his lonely grave she laid: 

The jasmine dropped its golden show- 
ers. 
The orange lent its bloom and shade. 

And something whispered in her 
thought. 
More sweet than mortal voices be: 
"The service thou for him hast 
wrought, 
O daughter! hath been done for 
me." 



CENTENNIAL HYMN 



Our fathers' God! from out whose 

hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
We meet to-day, united, free, 
And loyal to our land and Thee, 
To thank Thee for the era done, 
And trust Thee for the opening one. 



II 



Here, where of old, by Thy design. 
The fathers spake that word of Thine 
Whose echo is the glad refrain 
Of rended bolt and falling chain, 
To grace our festal time, from all 
The zones of earth our guests we call. 



Ill 



Be with us while the New World greets 
The Old World thronging all its 

streets. 
Unveiling all the triumphs won 
By art or toil beneath the sun; 
And unto common good ordain 
This rivalship of hand and brain. 



IV 



Thou, who hast here in concord furled 
The war flags of a gathered world. 
Beneath our Western skies fulfil 
The Orient's mission of good-will. 
And, freighted with love's Golden 

Fleece, 
Send back its Argonauts of peace. 



For art and labor met in truce. 
For beauty made the bride of use, 
We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave 
The austere virtues strong to save, 
The honor proof to place or gold. 
The manhood never bought nor sold ! 



VI 



Oh make Thou us, through centuries 

long. 
In peace secure, in justice strong; 
Around our gift of freedom draw 



HYMN OF THE CHILDREN 



The safeguards of thy righteous law: 
And, cast in some diviner mould, 
Let the new cycle shame the old'! 



AT SCHOOL-CLOSE 

BOWDOIN STREET, BOSTON, 1877 

The end has come, as come it must 
To all things; in these sweet June 
days 

The teacher and the scholar trust 
Their parting feet to separate ways. 

They part: but in the years to be 
Shall pleasant memories cling to 
each, 

As shells bear inland from the sea 
The murmur of the rhythmic l:)each. 

One knew the joy the sculptor knows 
When, plastic to his lightest touch, 

His clay-wrought model slowly grows 
To that fine grace desired so much. 

So daily grew before her eyes 

The living shapes whereon she 
wrought, 
Strong, tender, innocently wise, . 
The child's heart with the woman's 
thought. 

And one shall never quite forget 
The voice that called from dream 
and play. 
The firm but kindly hand that set 
Her feet in learning's pleasant 
way, — 20 

The joy of Undine soul-possessed. 
The wakening sense, the strange de- 
light 
That swelled the fabled statue's 
breast 
And filled its clouded eyes with 
sight ! 

O Youth and Beauty, loved of all ! 

Ye pass from girlhood's gate of 
dreams; 
In broader ways your footsteps fall. 

Ye test the truth of all that seems. 

Her little realm the teacher leaves. 
She breaks her wand of power apart, 



While, for your love and trust, she gives 
1 he warm thanks of a grateful heart. 

Hers is the sober summer noon 

Contrasted with your morn of 
spring, 

'^^)^,^^^""^S with the waxing moon. 
The folded with the outspread wing. 

Across the distance of the years 

She sends her God-speed back to 

you; 

She has no thought of doubts or fears: 

Be but yourselves, be pure, be 

true, 40 

And prompt in duty; heed the deep. 
Low voice of conscience; throueh 
the iU ^ 

And discord round about you, keep 
Your faith in human nature still. 

Be gentle: unto griefs and needs. 
Be pitiful as woman should. 

And, in spite of all the hes of creeds. 
Hold fast the truth that God is good. 

Give and receive; go forth and bless 

The world that needs the hand and 

heart 50 

Of Martha's helpful carefulness 
No less than Mary's better part. 

So shall the stream of time flow i)y 
And leave eacli year a richer good, 

And matron loveliness outvie 

The nameless charm of maidenhood. 

And, when tlie world shall link your 
names 
With gracious lives and manners 
fine. 
The teacher shall assert her claims. 
And proudly whisper, "These were 
mine!" 60 



HYMN OF THE CHILDREN 

SUNG AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
children's mission, BOSTON, 1878 

Thine are all tlio gifts, O God! 

Thine the broken broad; 
Let the naked feet be shod. 

And the starving fed. 



290 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Let Tliy children, by Thy grace, 

(live lus they abound, 
Till the poor 'have Ijreathing-space, 

And the lost are found. 

\\'iser than the miser's hoards 

Is the giver's choice; 
Sweeter than t\\v song of birds 

Is the thankful voice. 

Welcome smiles on faces sad 
As the flowers of spring; 

Let the tender hearts be glad 
With the joy they bring. 

Happier for their pity's sake 
Make their sports and plays, 

And from lips of childhood take 
Thy perfected praise ! 



THE LANDMARKS 



Through the streets of Marblehead 
Fast the red-winged terror sped; 

Blasting, withering, on it came, 
With its hundred tongues of flame, 

Where St. Michael's on its way 
Stood like chained Andromeda, 

Waiting on the rock, like her. 
Swift doom or deliverer ! 

Church that, after sea-moss grew 
Over walls no longer new, 10 

Counted generations five. 
Four entombed and one alive; 

Heard the martial thousand tread 
Battleward from Marblehead; 

Saw within the rock-w^alled bay 
Treville's lilied pennons play, 

And the fisher's dory met 
By the barge of Lafayette, 

Telling good news in advance 

Of the coming fleet of France ! 20 

Churcli to reverend memories dear, 
Quaint in desk and chandelier; 



Bell, whose century-rusted tongue 
Burials tolled and bridals rung; 

Loft, whose tiny organ kept 

Keys that Snetzler's hand had swept; 

Altar, o'er whose tablet old 
Sinai's law^ its thunders rolled ! 

Suddenly the sharp cry came: 

" Look ! St. Michael's is aflame ! " 30 

Round the low toAver wall the fire 
Snake-like wound its coil of ire. 

Sacred in its gray respect 
From the jealousies of sect, 

"Save it," seemed the thought of all. 
"Save it, though our roof-trees fall!" 

Up the tower the young men sprung; 
One, the bravest, outward swung 

By the rope, whose kindling strands 
Smoked beneath the holder's hands, 40 

Smiting down wath strokes of power 
Burning fragments from the tower. 

Then the gazing crowd beneath 
Broke the painful pause of breath; 

Brave men cheered from street to 

street. 
With home's ashes at their feet; 

Houseless women kerchiefs waved: 
"Thank the Lord! St. Michael's 
saved!" 

II 

In the heart of Boston town 

Stands the church of old renown, s© 

From whose w-alls the impulse went 
Which set free a continent; 

From whose pulpit's oracle 
Prophecies of freedom fell; 

And whose steeple-rocking din 
Rang the nation's birth-day in ! 

Standing at this very hour 
Perilled like St. Michael's tower, 



THE LANDMARKS 




291 



" In the heart of Boston town 
Stands the church of old renown " 



Held not in the clasp of flame, 

But by mammon's grasping claim. 60 

Shall it be of Boston said 
She is shamed by Marblehead ? 

City of our pride ! as there, 
Hast thou none to do and dare ? 

Life was risked for Michael's shrine; 
Shall not wealth be staked for thine ? 

Woe to thee, when men shall search 
Vainly for the Old South Church; 



When from Neck to Boston Stone, 
All thy pride of place is gone; 70 

When from Bay and railroad car. 
Stretched before thoin wide and far, 

Men shall only see a great 
Wilderness of brick and slate, 

Every holy spot o'orlaid 

By tiie commonplace of trade ! 

City of our love ! to thee 
Duty is but destiny. 



292 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



True to all thy record saith, 

Keep with thy traditions faith; t 

Ere occasion 's overpast, 
Hold its flowing forelock fast; 

Honor still the precedents 
Of a grand munificence; 

In thy old historic way 
Give, as thou didst yesterday 

At tiie South-land's call, or on 
Need's demand from fired St. John. 

Set thy Church's muffled bell 
Free the generous deed to tell. 

Let thy loyal hearts rejoice 
In the glad, sonorous voice, 

Ringing from the brazen mouth 
Of the bell of the Old South, — 

Ringing clearly, with a will, 

" What she was is Boston still ! " 



GARDEN 

HYMN FOR THE AMERICAN HORTICUL- 
TURAL SOCIETY, 1882 

O Painter of the fruits and flowers. 

We own Thy wise design. 
Whereby these human hands of ours 

May share the work of Thine ! 

Apart from Thee we plant in vain 
The root and sow the seed; 

Thy early and Tliy later rain, 
Thy sun and dew we need. 

Our toil is sweet with thankfulness, 

Our burden is our boon; 
The curse of Earth's gray morning is 

The blessing of its noon. 



Why 



wide world every- 



search the 
where 

For Eden's unknown ground? 
That garden of the primal pair 
May nevermore be found. 

iiut, blest by Thee, our patient toil 
May right the ancient wrong, 



And give to every clime and soil 
The beauty lost so long. 

Our homestead flowers and fruited 
trees 
May Eden's orchard shame; 
We taste the tempting sweets of 
these 
Like Eve, without her blame. 

And, North and South and East and 
West, 

The pride of every zone, 
The fairest, rarest, and the best 

May all be made our own. 

Its earliest shrines the young world 
sought 

In hill-groves and in bowers. 
The fittest offerings thither brought 

Were Thy own fruits and flowers. 

And still with reverent hands we call 
Thy gifts each year renewed; 

The good is always beautiful, 
The beautiful is good. 



A GREETING 



HARRIET 
TIETH 

1882 



BEECHER STOWE S SEVEN 
ANNIVERSARY, JUNE 14, 



Thrice welcome from the Land of 

Flowers 
And golden-fruited orange bowers 
To this sweet, green-turfed June of 

ours ! 
To her who, in our evil time. 
Dragged into light the nation's crime 
With strength beyond the strength of 

men, 
And, mightier than their swords, her 

pen! 
To her who world-wide entrance gave 
To the log-cabin of the slave; 
Made all his wrongs and sorrows 

known, lo 

And all earth's languages his own, — 
North, South, and East and West, 

made all 
The common air electrical, 
Until the o'ercharged bolts of heaven 
Blazed down, and every chain was 

riven ! 



A GREETING 



293 




" To her who, in our evil time, 
Dragged into light the nation's crime " 



Welcome from each and all to her 
Whose Wooing of the Minister 
Revealed the warm heart of the man 
Beneath the creed-bound Puritan, 
And taught the kinship of the love 20 
Of man below and God above; 
To her whose vigorous pencil-strokes 
Sketched into hfe her Oldtown Folks; 
Whose fireside stories, grave or gay, 
In quaint Sam Lawson's vagrant way 
With old New England's flavor rife, 
Waifs from her rude idyllic life. 
Are racy as the legends old 
By Chaucer or Boccaccio told; 



To her who keeps, through change of 

place .10 

And time, her native strength and 

grace. 
Alike where warm Sorrento sjniles, 
Or where, by birchen-shaded isles, 
Whose summer winds have shivered 

o'er 
The icy drift of Labrador, 
She lifts to light the priceless Pearl 
Of Harpsweli's angel-l)Pckoned girl! 
To her at threescore years and ten 
Be tributes of tiie tongue and 

pen; 



294 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



Be honor, praise, and heart-thanks 
given, 40 

The loves of earth, the hopes of hea- 
ven ! 

Ah, dearer than the praise that stirs 
The air to-day, our love is hers ! 
She needs no guaranty of fame 
Whose own is linked with Freedom's 

name. 
Long ages after ours shall keep 
Her memory Hving while W'e sleep; 
The waves that wash our gray coast 

lines. 
The winds that rock,the Southern pines, 
Shall sing of lier; the unending years 
Shall tell her tale in unborn ears. 51 
And when, with sins and folhes past. 
Are numbered color-hate and caste, 
White, black, and red shall own as one 
The noblest work by woman done. 



GODSPEED 

Outbound, your' bark awaits you. 
Were I one 
Whose prayer availeth much, my 

wish should be 
Your favoring trade-wind and con- 
senting sea. 
By sail or steed was never love outrun, 
And, here or there, love follows her in 
whom 
All graces and sweet charities unite, 
The old Greek beauty set in holier 
light; 
And lier for whom New England's by- 
ways bloom. 
Who walks among us welcome as the 
Spring, 
Calling up blossoms where her light 

feet stray. 
God keep you both, make beautiful 
your way, 
Comfort, console, and bless; and 

safely bring. 
Ere yet I make upon a vaster sea 
Tiie unreturning voyage, my friends 
to me. 

WINTER ROSES 

My garden roses long ago 

Have perished from the leaf-strewn 
walks; 



Their pale, fair sisters smile no more 
Upon the sweet-brier stalks. 

Gone with the fiower-time of my life, 
Spring's violets, summer's blooming 
pride. 

And Nature's winter and my own 
Stand, flowerless, side by side. 

So might I yesterday have sung; 

To-day, in bleak December's noon, 
Come sweetest fragrance, shapes, and 
hues. 

The rosy wealth of June ! 

Bless the young hands that culled the 

gift, 
And bless the liearts that prompted 

it; 
If undeserved it comes, at least 
It seems not all unfit. 

Of old my Quaker ancestors 

Had gifts of forty stripes save one; 
To-day as many roses crown 

The gray head of their son. 

And with them, to my fancy's eye, 
The fresh-faced givers smiling come, 

And nine and thirty happy girls 
Make glad a lonely room. 

They bring the atmosphere of youth; 

The light and warmth of long ago 
Are in my heart, and on my cheek 

The airs of morning blow. 

O buds of girlhood, yet unblown, 
And fairer than the gift ye chose. 

For you may years like leaves unfold 
The heart of Sharon's rose ! 



THE REUNION 

Read September 10, 1885, to the surviving 
student.s of Haverhill Academy in 1827- 
1830. 

The gulf of seven and fifty years 
We stretch our welcoming hands 

across; 
The distance but a pebble's toss 

Between us and our youth appears. 

For in life's school we linger on 
The remnant of a once full list; 



THE BARTHOLDI STATUE 



295 



Conning our lessons, undismissed, 
With faces to the setting sun. 

And some have gone the unknown 
way, 
And some await the call to rest; lo 
Who knoweth whether it is best 
For those who went or those who 
stay ? 

And yet despite of loss and ill, 

If faith and love and hope remain, 
Our length of days is not in vain, 

And life is well worth living still. 

Still to a gracious Providence 

The thanks of grateful hearts are 

due, 
For blessings when our lives were 
new, iQ 

For all the good vouchsafed us since. 

The pain that spared us sorer hurt. 
The wish denied, the purpose 

crossed, 
And pleasure's fond occasions lost, 

Were mercies to our small desert. 

'T is something that we wander back, 
Gray pilgrims, to our ancient ways, 
And tender memories of old days 

Walk with us by the Merrimac; 

That even in life's afternoon 

A sense of youth comes back again. 

As through this cool September 

rain 3 1 

The still green woodlands dream of 

June. 

The eyes grown dim to present things 
Have keener sight for bygone years. 
And sweet and clear, in deafening 
ears. 

The bird that sang at morning sings. 

Dear comrades, scattered wide and 
far. 
Send from their homes their kindly 

word, 
And dearer ones, unseen, unheard, 
Smile on us from some heavenly star. 

For life and death with God are one. 
Unchanged by seeming change His 
care ^^ 



And love are round us here ami 
there; 
He breaks no thread His hand has 
spun. 

Soul touches soul, the muster roll 
Of life eternal has no gaps; 
And after half a century's lapse 

Our school-day ranks are closed and 
whole. 

Hail and farewell ! We go our way; 

Where shadows end, we tni.st in 
light; so 

The star that ushers in the night 
Is herald also of the day ! 



NORUMBEGA HALL 

Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the 
spires 

Of the sought City rose, nor yet be- 
side 

The winding Charles, nor where the 
daily tide 

Of Naumkeag's haven rises and re- 
tires. 

The vision tarried; but somewhere we 
knew 

The beautiful gates must open to our 
quest. 

Somewhere that marvellous City of 
the West 

Would lift its towers and palace domes 
in view. 

And, lo ! at last its mystery is made 
known — 

Its only dwellers maidens fair and 
young. 

Its Princess such as England's Lau- 
reate sung; 

And safe from capture, save by love 
alone, 

It lends its l)eauty to the lake's green 
shore, 

And Norumbega is a myth no more. 



THE BARTHOLDI STATUE 

1886 

The land, that, from the rule of kings, 
In freeing us, itself made free, 

Our Old World Sister, to us brings 
Her sculptured Dream of Liberty: 



296 



OCCASIONAL POEMS 



M^-^^ 
*^^'^^-- 




« 



*' Rise, stately Symbol ! holding forth 
Thy light and hope to all who sit 
In chains and darkness ! " 



Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands 
Uplifted by the toil-worn slave, 

On Freedom's soil with freemen's 
hands 
We rear the symbol free hands gave. 

France, the beautiful ! to thee 
( )nce more a debt of love we owe : 

In peace beneath thy Colors Three, 
We hail a later Rochambeau ! 

Rise, stately Symbol ! holding forth 
Thy light and hope to all who sit 
In chains and darkness ! Belt the 
earth 
With watch-fires from thy torch 
uplit ! 

Reveal the primal mandate still 
Which Chaos heard and ceased to be, 



Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will 
In signs of fire: " Let man be free ! " 

Shine far, shine free, a guiding light 
To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim, 

A liglitning-flash the wretch to smite 
Who shields his license with thy 
name! 



ONE OF THE SIGNERS 

O STORIED vale of Merrimac, 

Rejoice through all thy shade and 
shine. 

And from his century's sleep call back 
A brave and honored son of thine. 

Unveil his effigy between 

The living and the dead to-day; 



ONE OF THE SIGNERS 



297 



The fathers of the Old Thirteen 
Shall witness bear as spirits may. 

Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers, 
The shades of Lee and Jefferson, 10 

Wise Franklin reverend with his years, 
And Carroll, lord of Carrollton ! 

Be thine henceforth a pride of place 
Beyond thy namesake's over-sea. 

Where scarce a stone is left to trace 
The Holy House of Amesbury. 

A prouder memory lingers round 
The birthplace of thy true man 
here 
Than that which haunts the refuge 
found 
By Arthur's mythic Guinevere. 20 

The plain deal table where he sat 
And signed a nation's title-deed 

Is dearer now to fame than that 
Which bore the scroll of Runny- 
mede. 

Long as, on Freedom's natal morn. 
Shall ring the Independence bells, 

Give to thy dwellers yet unborn 
The lesson which his image tells. 

For in that hour of Destiny, 

Which tried the men of bravest 
stock, 30 



He knew the end alone must be 
A free land or a traitor's block. 

Among those picked and chosen men 
Than his, who here first drew his 
breath. 

No firmer fingers held the pen 
Which wrote for liberty or death. 

Not for their hearths and homes alone, 

But for the world their work was 

done; 

On all the winds their thought lias 

flown 

Through all the circuit of the sun. 40 

We trace its flight by broken chains. 
By songs of grateful Labor still; 

To-day, in all her holy fanes, 
It rings the bells of freed Brazil. 

O hills that watched his boyhood's 
home, 
O earth and air that nursed him, 

In this memorial semblance, room 
To him who shall its bronze out- 
hve! 

And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice 
That in the countless years to come. 

Whenever Freedom needs a voice, 51 
These sculptured lips shall not be 
dumb! 




" Behind them, marshes, seamed and crossed 
Witli narrow creeks, and liower-embossed " 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 

I WOULD not sin, in this half-playful 
strain, — 
Too lij2;ht perhaps for serious years, 
tlioufi;h born 
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain, — 
Against the pure ideal which has 
drawn 



My feet to follow its far-shining gleam. 
A simple plot is mine: legends and 

runes 
Of credulous days, old fancies that 

have lain 
Silent from boyhood taking voice 

again. 
Warmed into life once more, even as 

the tunes 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



299 



That, frozen in the fabled hunting- 
horn, ,0 

Thawed into sound: — a winter fire- 
side dream 

Of dawns and sunsets by the summer 
sea. 

Whose sands are traversed by a silent 
throng 

Of voyagers from that vaster mystery 

Of which it is an emblem; — and the 
dear 

Memory of one who might have tuned 
my song 

To sweeter music by her delicate ear. 



When heats as of a tropic clime 
Burned all our inland valleys 
through, 
Three friends, the guests of summer 
time, 20 

Pitched their white tent where 
sea-winds blew. 
Behind them, marshes, seamed and 

crossed 
With narrow creeks, and flower- 
embossed, 
Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose 

leafy arms 
Screened from the stormy East the 
pleasant inland farms. 

At full of tide their bolder shore 
Of sun-bleached sand the waters 
beat; 
At ebb, a smooth and glistening floor 
They touched with light, receding 
feet. 
Northward a green bluff broke the 
chain 30 

Of sand-hills; southward stretched 
a plain 
Of salt grass, with a river winding 

down, 
Sail-whitened, and beyond the stee- 
ples of the town, — 

Whence sometimes, when the wind 
was light 
And dull the thunder of the beach 
They heard the bells of morn and 
night 
Swing, miles away, their silver 
speech. 
Above low scarp and turf-grown 
wall 



They saw the fort-flag rise and fall; 
And, the first star to signal twilight's 

hour, 40 

The lamp-fire glimmer down from the 

tall light-house tower. 

They rested there, escaped awhile 
From cares that wear the life 
away. 
To eat the lotus of the Nile 

And drink the poppies of Ca- 
thay, — 
To fling tlieir loads of custom down, 
Like drift-weed, on the sand-slopes 
brown. 
And in the sea-waves drown the rest- 
less pack 
Of duties, claims, and needs that 
barked upon their track. 

One, with his beard scarce silvered, 
bore 50 

A ready credence in his looks, 
A lettered magnate, lording o'er 

An ever-wi(l(>ning realm of books. 
In him brain-currents, near and far, 
Converged as in a Leyden jar; 
The old, dead autiiors thronged him 

round about. 
And Elzevir's gray ghosts from lea- 
thern graves looked out. 

He knew each living pmidit well. 
Could weigh tlie gifts of him or 
her. 
And well the market value tell ^o 

Of poet and philosopher. 
But if he lost, the scenes behind, 
Somewhat of reverence vague and 
blind. 
Finding the actors human at the best, 
No readier lips than his the good he 
saw confessed. 

His boyhood fancies not outgro\\Ti, 
He loved himself the singer's art; 
Tended v, gently. I)y his own 

He knew and juclged an author's 

heart. 

No Rhadanianthine l)row of doom 

Bowed the dazed pedant from his 

room ; • U 

And bards, whose name is legion, if 

denied, 
Bore off alike intact their verses and 
their pride. 



300 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Pleasant it was to roam about 

The lettered world as he had done, 
And see the lords of song without 
Their singing robes and garlands 
on. 
With Wordsworth paddle Rydal 

mere, 
Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed 
beer, 
And with the ears of Rogers, at four- 
score, ^° 
Hear Garriek's buskined tread and 
Walpole's wit once more. 

And one tliere was, a dreamer born. 

Who, with a mission to fulfil. 
Had left the Muses' haunts to turn 

The crank of an opinion-mill, 
Making his rustic reed of song 
A weapon in the war with wrong, 
Yoking his fancy to the breaking- 
plough 
That beam-deep turned the soil for 
truth to spring and grow. 

Too quiet seemed the man to ride 90 

The winged Hippogriff Reform; 
Was his a voice from side to side 
To pierce the tumult of the 
storm ? 
A silent, shy, peace-loving man, 
He seemed no fiery partisan 
To hold his way against the public 

frown. 
The ban of Church and State, the 
fierce mob's hounding down. 

For while he wrought with strenu- 
ous will 
The work his hands had found to 
do, 
He heard the fitful music still 100 
Of winds tJKit out of dream-land 
blew. 
The din about him could not drown 
What the strange voices whispered 
down; 
Along his task-field weird processions 

swept. 
The visionary pomp of stately phan- 
toms stepped. 

The common air was thick with 
dreams, — 
He told them to the toiling 
crowd; 



Such music as the woods and 

streams 

Sang in his ear he sang aloud; 

In still, shut bays, on windy capes, 

He heard the call of beckoning 

shapes, m 

And, as the gray old shadows prompted 

him, 
To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped 
their legends grim. 

He rested now his weary hands. 
And lightly moralized and 
laughed, 
As, tracing on the shifting sands 
A burlesque of his paper-craft, 
He saw the careless waves o'errun 
His words, as time before had done. 
Each day's tide-water washing clean 
away, 120 

Like letters from the sand, the work of 
yesterday. 

And one, whose Arab face was 
tanned 
By tropic sun and boreal frost. 
So travelled there was scarce a land 

Or people left him to exhaust. 
In idling mood had from him hurled 
The poor squeezed orange of the 
world. 
And in the tent-shade, sat beneath a 

palm, 
Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in 
Oriental calm. 

The very waves that washed the 
sand 130 

Below him, he had seen before 
Whitening the Scandinavian strand 

And sultry Mauritanian shore. 
From ice-rimmed isles, from sum- 
mer seas 
Palm-fringed, they bore him mes- 
sages; 
He heard the plaintive Nubian songs 

again. 
And mule-bells tinkling down the 
mountain-paths of Spain. 

His memory round the ransacked 

earth 

On Puck's long girdle slid at ease; 

And, instant, to the valley's girth 

Of mountains, spice isles of the 

seas, 141 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



301 



Faith flowered in minster stones, 

Art's guess 
At truth and beauty, found access; 
Yet loved the while, that free cosmo- 

pohte, 
Old friends, old ways, and kept his 
boyhood's dreams in sight. 

Untouched as yet by wealth and 
pride, 
That virgin innocence of beach: 
No shingly monster, hundred-eyed. 
Stared its gray sand-birds out of 
reach; 
Unhoused, save where, at inter- 
vals, ISO 
The white tents showed their canvas 

walls. 
Where brief sojourners, in the cool, 

soft air, 
Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, 
and year-long care. 

Sometimes along the wheel-deep 
sand 
A one-horse wagon slowly 
crawled, 
Deep laden with a youthful band, 
Whose look some homestead old 
recalled; 
Brother perchance, and sisters 

twain. 
And one whose blue eyes told, more 
plain 
Than the free language of her rosy 
lip, 160 

Of the still dearer claim of love's rela- 
tionship. 

With cheeks of russet-orchard tint. 

The light laugh of their native rills. 

The perfume of their garden's mint, 

The breezy freedom of the hills, 
They bore, in unrestrained delight. 
The motto of the Garter's knight. 
Careless as if from every gazing thing 
Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by 
his ring. 

The clanging sea-fowl came and 

went, 170 

The hunter's gun in the marshes 

rang; 

At nightfall from a neighboring tent 

A flute-voiced woman sweetly 

sang. 



Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in- 
hand. 
Young girls went tripping down the 
sand; 
And youths and maidens, sitting in 

the moon, 
Dreamed o'er the old fond dream 
from which we wake too soon. 

At times their fishing-lines -they 

plied, 

With an old Triton at the oar, 

Salt as the sea-wind, tougli and 

dried ,80 

As a lean cusk from Labrador. 

Strange tales he told of wreck and 

storm, — 
Had seen the sea-snake's awful 
form. 
And heard the gliosts on Haley's Islo 

complain, 
Speak him off shore, and beg a pas- 
sage to old Spain ! 

And there, on breezy morns, they 
saw 
The fishing-schooners outward 
run. 
Their low-bent sails in tack and 
flaw 
Turned white or dark to shade 
and sun. 
Sometimes, in cahns of closing 
day, i«o 

They watched the spectral mirage 
play, 
Saw low, far islands looming tall and 

nigh, 
And ships, with upturned keels, sail 
like a sea the sky. 

Sometimes a cloud, with tliunder 
black. 
Stooped low upon the darkening 
main, 
Piercing the waves along its track 
With the slant javelins of 
rain. 
And when west-wind and sunsliine 

warm 
Chased out to sea its wrecks of 
storm, 
They saw the prismy liues in thin 
spray showers 300 

Where the green buds of waves burst 
into white froth flowers. 



302 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



And when along tlie line of shore 
The mists crept upward chill and 
damp, 
Stretched, careless, on their sandy 
floor 
Beneath the flaring lantern lamp, 
They talked of all things old and 

new, 
Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers do; 
And in the unquestioned freedom of 

the tent. 
Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful 
ease unbent. 

Once, when the sunset splendors 
died, 2IO 

And, trampling up the sloping 
sand. 
In lines outreaching far and wide, 
The white-maned billows swept 
to land, 
Dim seen across the gathering 

shade, 
A vast and ghostly cavalcade, 
They sat around their lighted kero- 
sene, 
Hearing the deep bass roar their every 
pause between. 

Then, urged tliereto, the Editor 

Within his full portfolio dipped, 
Feigning excuse while searching for 
(With secret pride) his manu- 
script. 22 1 
His pale face flushed from eye to 

beard, 
With nervous cough his throat he 
cleared, 
And, in a voice so tremulous it be- 
trayed 
The anxious fondness of an author's 
heart, he read: 



THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH 

RiVERMouTH Rocks are fair to see, 
By dawn or sunset shone across, 
When tlie ebb of the sea has left them 

free 
To dry their fringes of gold-green 

moss : 
For there the river comes winding 

down, 230 

From salt sea-meadows and uplands 

brown, 



And waves on the outer rocks afoam 
Shout to its waters, " Welcome home ! " 

And fair are the sunny isles in view 
East of the grisly Head of the Boar, 

And Agamenticus lifts its blue 

Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er; 

And southerly, when the tide is down, 

'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills 
brown. 

The beach-birds dance and the gray 
gulls wheel 240 

Over a floor of burnished steel. 

Once, in the old Colonial days. 

Two hundred years ago and more, 
A boat sailed down through the wind- 
ing ways 
Of Hampton River to that low shore, 
Full of a goodly company 
Sailing out on the summer sea, 
Veering to catch the land-breeze light, 
With the Boar to left and the Rocks 
to right. 

In Hampton meadows, where mowers 

laid 250 

Their scythes to the swaths of salted 

grass, 
" Ah, well-a-day ! our hay must be 

made ! " 
A young man sighed, who saw them 

pass. 
Loud laughed his fellows to see him 

stand 
Whetting his scythe with a listless 

hand. 
Hearing a voice in a far-off song, 
Watching a white hand beckoning 

long. 

" Fie on the witch ! " cried a merry 

girl. 
As they rounded the point where 

Goody Cole 259 

Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, 

A bent and blear-eyed poor old 

soul. 
"Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave 

to-day ! 
But I hear the little waves laugh and 

say, 
'The broth will be cold that waits at 

home ; 
For it 's one to go, but another to 

come! ' " 



THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH 



303 




" ' Oho ! ' she muttered, ' ye 're brave to-day ! 



"She 's cursed," said the skipper; 

"speak her fair: 
I 'm scary always to see her 

shake 
Her wicked head, with its wild gray 

hair, 
And nose like a hawk, and eyes like 

a snake." 
But merrily still, with laugh and 

shout, 270 

From Hampton River the boat sailed 

out, 
Till the huts and the flakes on Star 

seemed nigh, 
And they lost the scent of the pines of 

Rye. 

They dropped their lines in the lazy 
tide. 
Drawing up haddock and mottled 
cod; 
They saw not the Shadow that walked 
beside, 
They heard not the feet with silence 
shod. 



But thicker and thicker a hot mist 

grew, 
Shot by the lightnings through and 

through; 
And muffled growls, like the growl of 

a beast, 280 

Ran along the sky from west to eiust. 

Then the skipper looked from the 
darkening sea 
Up to the dinnned and wading sun; 
But he spake like a brave man ciieer- 

"Yet there is time for our home- 
ward run." 

Veering and tacking, they backward 
wore; 

And just as a breath from the woods 
ashore 

Blew out to whisper of danger past. 

The wrath of the storm came down at 
last ! '^'^ 

The skipper hauled at the heavy sail : 
" God be our help ! " he only cried, 



304 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



As tlie roaring gale, like the stroke of a 

flail, 
Smote the boat on its starboard 

side. 
The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone 
Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise 

blown. 
Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's 

glare, 
The strife and torment of sea and air. 

Goody Cole looked out from her door: 
Tlie Isles of Slioals were drowned 

and gone, 
Scarcely she saw the Head of the 

Boar 300 

Toss the foam from tusks of stone. 
She clasped her hands with a grip of 

pain, 
The tear on her cheek was not of rain : 
" They are lost," she muttered, " boat 

and crew! 
Lord, forgive me! my words were 

true!" 

Suddenly seaward swept the squall; 
The low sun smote through cloudy 

rack; 
The Shoals stood clear in the light, and 

all 
The trend of the coast lay hard and 

black. 30Q 

But far and wide as eye could reach, 
No life was seen upon wave or beach; 
The boat that went out at morning 

never 
Sailed back again into Hampton 

River. 

O mower, lean on thy bended snath. 
Look from the meadows green and 

low: 
The wind of the sea is a waft of death. 
The waves are singing a song of 

woe! 
By silent river, by moaning sea. 
Long and vain shall thy watching be: 
Never again shall the sweet voice 

call, 320 

Never the white hand rise and fall ! 

O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight 
Ye saw in the light of breaking day ! 

Dead faces looking up cold and white 
P>om sand and seaweed where they 
lay. 



The mad old witch-wife wailed and 
wept, 

And cursed the tide as it backward 
crept : 

"Crawl back, crawl back, blue water- 
snake ! 

Leave your dead for the hearts that 
break!" 

Solemn it was in that old day 330 

In Hampton town and its log-built 

church, 
Where side by side the coffins lay 
And the mourners stood in aisle and 

porch. 
In the singing-seats young eyes were 

dim, 
The voices faltered tliat raised the 

hymn. 
And Father Dalton, grave and stern, 
Sobbed through his prayer and wept 

in turn. 

But his ancient colleague did not 
pray; 
Under the weight of his fourscore 
years 

He stood apart with the iron-gray 340 
Of his strong brows knitted to hide 
his tears; 

And a fair-faced woman of doubtful 
fame. 

Linking her own with his honored 
name, 

Subtle as sin, at his side withstood 

The felt reproach of her neighbor- 
hood. 

Apart with them, like them forbid. 
Old Goody Cole looked drearily 

round. 
As, two by two, with their faces 

hid. 
The mourners walked to the bury- 

ing-ground. 
She let the staff from her clasped 

hands fall: 350 

"Lord, forgive us! we 're sinners 

all!" 
And the voice of the old man answered 

her: 
"Amen!" said Father Bachiler. 

So, as I sat upon Appledore 

In the calm of a closing summer 
day, 



THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE 



305 



And the broken lines of Hampton 

shore 
In purple mist of cloiidland lay, 
The Ri vermouth Rocks their story 

told; 
And waves aglow with sunset gold, 
Rising and breaking in steady chime, 
Beat the rhythm and kept the time. 361 

And the sunset paled, and warmed 
once more 
With a softer, tenderer after-glow; 

In the east was moon-rise, with boats 
ofT-shore 
And sails in the distance drifting 
slow. 

The beacon glimmered from Ports- 
mouth bar. 

The White Isle kindled its great red 
star; 

And life and death in my old-time lay 

Mingled in peace like the night and 
day! 



"Well!" said the Man of Books, 
"your story 370 

Is really not ill told in verse. 
As the Celt said of purgatory. 
One might go farther and fare 
worse." 
The Reader smiled; and once again 
With steadier voice took up his 
strain, 
While the fair singer from the neigh- 
boring tent 
Drew near, and at his side a graceful 
listener bent. 



THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE 

Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles 
Dimple round its hundred isles, 
And the mountain's granite ledge 380 
Cleaves the water like a wedge. 
Ringed about with smooth, gray 

stones. 
Rest the giant's mighty bones. 

Close beside, in shade and gleam. 
Laughs and ripples Melvin stream; 
Melvin water, mountain-born, 
All fair flowers its banks adorn; 
All the woodland voices meet. 
Mingling with its murmurs sweet. 



Over lowlands forest-grown, .3^0 

Over waters island-strown. 
Over silver-sanded beach, 
Leaf-locked bay and misty reach, 
Melvin stream and burial-heap. 
Watch and ward the mountains 
keep. 

Who that Titan cromlech fills ? 
Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills? 
Knight who on the birchen tree 
Carved his savage heraldry ? 
Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim, 
Prophet, sage, or wizard grim ? 401 

Rugged type of primal man, 
Grim utilitarian. 

Loving woods for hunt and prowl, 
Lake and hill for fish and fowl, 
As the brown bear blind and dull 
To the grand and beautiful : 

Not for him the lesson drawn 
From the mountains smit with dawn. 
Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May, 
Sunset's purple bloom of day, — 411 
Took his life no hue from thence. 
Poor amid such affluence ? 

Haply unto hill and tree 
All too near akin was he: 
Unto him who stands afar 
Nature's marvels greatest are; 
Who the mountain purple seeks 
Must not climb the higher peaks. 

Yet who knows, in winter tramp, 420 
Or the midnight of the camp. 
What revealings faint and far, 
Stealing down from moon and star, 
Kindled in that human clod 
Thought of destiny and God ? 

Stateliest forest patriarch. 

Grand in robes of skin and bark, 

What sepulchral niy.steries, 

What weird funeral-rites, were his? 

What sharp wail, what drear lament, 

Back scared wolf and eagle sent ? 43 1 

Now, whate'er he may have been, 
Low he lies as other men ; 
On his mound the partridge drums, 
There the noisy blue-jay comes; 
Rank nor name nor pomp has he 
Li the grave's democracy. 



3o6 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Part thy l)luc lips, Northern lake! 
Moss-growii rocks, your silence break ! 
Tell the tale, thou ancient tree! 440 
Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee ! 
Speak, and tell us how and when 
Lived and died this king of men ! 

Wordless moans the ancient pine; 
Lake and mountain give no sign; 
Vain to trace this ring of stones; 
Vain the se-^T-ch of crumbling bones: 
Deepest of 11 mysteries, 
And the saddest, silence is. 

Nameless, noteless, clay with clay 450 
Mingles slowly day by day; 
But somewhere, for good or ill, 
That dark soul is living still; 
Somewhere yet that atom's force 
Moves the light-poised universe. 

Strange that on his burial-sod 
Harebells l)loom, and golden-rod, 
While the soul's dark horoscope 
Holds no starry sign of hope ! 
Is the ITnseen with sight at odds ? 460 
Nature's pity more than God's ? 

Thus I mused by Melvin's side, 
While the summer eventide 
Made the woods and inland sea 
And the mountains mystery; 
And the hush of earth and air 
Seemed the pause before a prayer, — 

Prayer for him, for all who rest. 
Mother Earth, upon thy breast, — 
Lapped on Christian turf, or hid 470 
In rock-cave or pyramid: 
All who sleep, as all who live, 
Well may need the prayer, "For- 
give ! " 

Desert-smothered caravan. 
Knee-deep dust that once was man, 
Battle-trenches ghastly piled. 
Ocean-floors with white bones tiled. 
Crowded tomb and mounded sod. 
Dumbly crave that prayer to God. 

Oh, the generations old 480 

Over whom no church-bells tolled, 
C^hristless, lifting up l)lind eyes 
'Fo the silonce of the skies ! 
For the innumerable dead 
Is my soul disquieted. 



Where be now these silent hosts ? 
Where the camping-ground of ghosts ? 
Wliere the spectral conscripts led 
To the white tents of the dead ? 
What strange shore or chartless sea 
Holds the awful mystery ? 491 

Then the warm sky stooped to make 

Double sunset in the lake; 

While above I saw with it. 

Range on range, the mountains lit; 

And the calm and splendor stole 

Like an answer to my soul. 

Hear'st thou, O of little faith, 
What to thee the mountain saith, 
What is whispered by the trees ? — 
"Cast on God thy care for these; 501 
Trust Him, if thy sight be dim: 
Doubt for them is doubt of Him. 

" Blind must be their close-shut eyes 
Where like night the sunshine lies. 
Fiery-linked the self-forged chain 
Binding ever sin to pain, 
Strong their prison-house of will, 
But without He waiteth still. 

" Not with hatred's undertow 510 

Doth the Love Eternal flow; 
Every chain that spirits wear 
Crumbles in the l)reath of prayer; 
And the penitent's desire 
Opens every gate of fire. 

"Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, 
Yearns to reach these souls in prison ! 
Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of Thy cross ! 
Never yet abyss was found 520 

Deeper than that cross could sound!" 

Therefore well may Nature keep 
Equal faith with all who sleep. 
Set her watch of hills around 
Christian grave and heathen mound, 
And to cairn and kirkyard send 
Summer's flow^ery dividend. 

Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream. 
Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam ! 
On the Indian's grassy tomb 530 

Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom ! 
Deep below, as high above. 
Sweeps the circle of God's love. 



THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE 



307 




" Deepest of all mysteries, 
Aud the saddest, silence is" 



He paused and questioned with his 
verdict on his 



eye 
The hearers' 



song. . 

A low voice asked: "Is't well to 

Into the secrets which belong 
Only to God ? — The life to be 
Is still the unguessed mystery : 
Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls 
remain, 540 

We beat with dream and wish the 
soundless doors in vain. 

"But faith beyond our sight may 

He said: "The gracious Fatlier- 
hood 
Can only know above, below. 

Eternal purposes of good. 
From our free heritage of will, 
The bitter springs of pain and ill 



Flow only in all worlds. The perfect 

day 
Of God is sliadowless, and love is love 

alway." 

"I know," she said, "tlie letter 
kills; 5 50 

That on our arid fields of strife 
And heat of clashing texts distils 

The dew of spirit and of life. 
But, searching still the written 

Word, 
I fain would find. Thus saith the 
Lord, 
A voucher for the hope I also feel 
That sin can give no wound beyond 
love's power to heal." 

"Pray," said the Man of liooks, 
"give o'er 
A theme too vast for time and 
place. 559 



3o8 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Go on, Sir Poet, ride once more 

Your hobby at his old free pace. 
Hut let him "keep, witli step dis- 
creet. 
The soHd earth beneath his feet. 
In the great mystery which around us 

hes. 
The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven- 
helped is wise." 

The Traveller said: "If songs have 
creeds. 
Their choice of them let singers 
make; 
But Art no other sanction needs 

Than beauty for its own fair sake. 
It grinds not in the mill of use, 570 
Nor asks for leave, nor begs ex- 
cuse; 
It makes the flexile laws it deigns to 

own. 
And gives its atmosphere its color and 
its tone. 

"Confess, old friend, your austere 
school 
Has left your fancy little chance; 
You square to reason's rigid rule 

The flowing outlines of romance. 
With conscience keen from exer- 
cise, 
And chronic fear of compromise, 
You check the free play of your 
rhymes, to clap 580 

A moral underneath, and spring it 
like a trap." 

The sweet voice answered: " Better 
so 
Than bolder flights that know no 
check; 
Better to use the bit, than throw 
The reins all loose on fancy's 
neck. 
The liberal range of Art should be 
The breadth of Christian liberty. 
Restrained alone by challenge and 

alarm 
Where its charmed footsteps tread 
the border land of harm. 

" Beyond the poet's sweet dream 
lives SQo 

The eternal epic of the man. 
He wisest is who only gives. 

True to himself, the best he can; 



Who, drifting in the winds of praise, 
The inward monitor obeys; 
And, with the boldness that confesses 

fear, 
Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his 
conscience steer. 

"Thanks for the fitting word he 
speaks, 
Nor less for doubtful word un- 
spoken. 
For the false model that he breaks, 
As for the moulded grace un- 
broken; 601 
For what is missed and what re- 
mains. 
For losses which are truest gains, 
For reverence conscious of the Eternal 

eye. 
And truth too fair to need the garnish 
of a lie." 

Laughing, the Critic bowed. " I 
yield 
The point without another word; 
Who ever yet a case appealed 
Where beauty's judgment had 
been heard ? 
And you, my good friend, owe to 
me 610 

Your warmest thanks for such a 
plea, 
As true withal as sweet For my of- 
fence 
Of cavil, let her words be ample re- 
compense." 

Across the sea one lighthouse star, 
With crimson ray that came and 
went, 
Revolving on its tower afar, 

Looked through the doorway of 
the tent. 
While outward, over sand-slopes 

wet, 
The lamp flashed down its yellow 
jet 
On the long wash of waves, with red 
and green 620 

Tangles of weltering weed through the 
white foam-wreaths seen. 

" ' Sing while we may, — another 
day 
May bring enough of sorrow;' — 
thus 



THE BROTHER OF MERCY 



309 



Our Traveller in his own sweet lay, 

His Crimean camp-song, hints to 

us," 

The lady said. "So let it be; 

Sing us a song," exclaimed all three. 

She smiled : " I can but marvel at your 

choice 
To hear our poet's words through my 
poor borrowed voice." 

Her window opens to the bay, 630 
On glistening light or misty gray, 
And there at dawn and set of day 

In prayer she kneels. 
" Dear Lord ! " she saith, " to many a 

home 
From wind and wave the wanderers 

come; 
I only see the tossing foam 

Of stranger keels. 

" Blown out and in by summer gales. 
The stately ships, with crowded sails. 
And sailors leaning o'er their rails. 

Before me glide; 641 

They come, they go, but nevermore, 
Spice-laden from the Indian shore, 
I see his swift-winged Isidore 

The waves divide. 

" O Thou ! with whom the night is 

day 
And one the near and far away. 
Look out on yon gray waste, and say 

Where lingers he. 
Alive, perchance, on some lone beach 
Or thirsty isle beyond the reach 651 
Of man, he hears the mocking speech 

Of wind and sea. 

"O dread and cruel deep, reveal 
The secret which thy waves con- 
ceal. 
And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheel 

And tell your tale. 
Let winds that tossed his raven hair 
A message from my lost one bear, — 
Some thought of me, a last fond 
prayer 660 

Or dying wail ! 

" Come, with your dreariest truth shut 

out 
The fears that haunt me round about; 
O God ! I cannot bear this doubt 

That stifles breath. I 



The worst is better than the dread; 
Give me but leave to mourn my dead 
Asleep in trust and iiope, instead 
Of life in death ! " 

It might have been the evening 
breeze 670 

That whispered in the garden trees, 
It might have been the sound of seas 

That rose and fell; 
But, with her heart, if not her oar, 
The old loved voice she seemed to 

hear : 
" I wait to meet thee: be of cheer, 

For all is well!" 



The sweet voice into silence went, 
A silence which was almost pain, 
As through it rolled tlie long lament, 
The cadence of the mournful 
main. 681 

Glancing his written pages o'er, 
The Reader tried his part once 
more; 
Leaving the land of hackmatack and 

pine 
For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and 
with vine. 



THE BROTHER OF MERCY 

PiERO LucA, known of all the town 

As the gray porter by the Pitti wall 
Where the noon siiadows of the gar- 
dens fall, 
Sick and in dolor, waited to lay dowTi 
His last sad burden, and beside liis 
mat 'x'o 

The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat. 

Unseen, in square and blossoming 

garden drifted, 
Soft sunset lights through green Val 

d' Arno sifted ; 
Unheard, below the living shuttles 

shifted 
Backward and forth, and wove, m 

love or strife, 
In mirth or pain, the mottled web of 

But when at last came upward from 

the street 
Tinkle of bell and tread of measured 

feet. 



3IO 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



The sick man started, strove to rise in 

vain, 
Sinking back heavily with a moan of 

pain. 700 

And the monk said, '' 'T is but the 

Brotherhood 
Of Mercy going on some errand good : 
Their black masks by the palace-wall 

I see." 
Piero answered faintly, "Woe is me! 
This day for the first time in forty 

years 
In vain the bell hath sounded in my 

ears. 
Calling me with my brethren of the 

mask, 
Beggar and prince alike, to some new 

task 
Of love or pity, — haply from the 

street 
To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, 

with feet 71° 

Hushed to the quickened ear and 

feverish brain. 
To tread the crowded lazaretto's 

floors, 
Down tlie long twilight of the corri- 
dors. 
Midst tossing arms and faces full of 

pain. 
I loved the work: it was its own re- 
ward. 
I never counted on it to offset 
My sins, which are many, or make less 

my debt 
To the free grace and mercy of our 

Lord ; 
But somehow, father, it has come to 

be 
In these long years so much a part of 

me, 720 

I should not know myself, if lacking 

it, 
But with tlie work the worker too 

would die, 
And in my place some other self would 

sit, 
Joyful or sad, — what matters, if not 

I? 
And now all's over. Woe is me!" — 

" My son," 
The monk said soothingly, "thy work 

is done; 
And no more as a servant, but the 

guest 
Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest. 



No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the 

lost, 
Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt 

sit down 730 

Clad in white robes, and wear a golden 

crown 
Forever and forever." — Piero tossed 
On his sick-pillow: "Miserable me! 
I am too poor for such grand com- 
pany; ♦ 
The crown would be too heavy for this 

gray 
Old head; and God forgive me if I say 
It would be hard to sit there night and 

day, 
Like an image in the Tribune, doing 

naught 
With these hard hands, that all my 

life have wrought, 
Not for bread only, but for pity's sake. 
I'm dull at prayers: I could not keep 

awake, 741 

Counting my beads. Mine's but a 

crazy head. 
Scarce worth the saving, if all else be 

dead. 
And if one goes to heaven without a 

heart, 
God knows he leaves behind his better 

part. 
I love my fellow-men: the worst I 

know 
I would do good to. Will death change 

me so 
That I shall sit among the lazy saints. 
Turning a deaf ear to the sore com- 
plaints 
Of souls that suffer? Why, I never 

yet 750 

I^eft a poor dog in the strada hard be- 
set. 
Or ass o'erladen ! Must I rate man less 
Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness ? 
Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the 

thought be sin !) 
The world of pain were better, if 

therein 
One's heart might still be human, and 

desires 
Of natural pity drop upon its fires 
Some cooling tears." 

Thereat the pale monk crossed 
His brow, and muttering, " Madman ! 

thou art lost!" 760 

Took up his pyx and fled; and, left 

alone, 



THE CHANGELING 



3" 



The sick man closed his eyes with a 

great groan 
That sank into a prayer, " Thv will be 

done!" 

Then was he made aware, by soul or 

ear, 
Of somewhat pure and holy bending 

o'er him, 
And of a voice like that of her who 

bore him, 
Tender and most compassionate: 

" Never fear ! 
For heaven is love, as God himself is 

love; 
Thy work below shall be thy work 

above." 
And when he looked, lo ! in the stern 

monk's place 770 

He saw the shining of an angel's 

face! 



The Traveller broke the pause. "I've 
seen 
The Brothers down the long street 
steal, 
Black, silent, masked, the crowd be- 
tween. 
And felt to doff my hat and kneel 
With heart, if not with knee, in prayer. 
For blessings on their pious care." 
The Reader wiped his glasses : 

'' Friends of mine, 
We'll try our home-brewed next, in- 
stead of foreign wine." 



THE CHANGELING 

For the fairest maid in Hampton 780 
They needed not to search. 

Who saw young Anna Favor 
Come walking into church, — 

Or bringing from the meadows. 

At set of harvest-day, 
The frohc of the blackbirds, 

The sweetness of the hay. 

Now the weariest of all mothers. 
The saddest two years' bride, 

She scowls in the face of her hus- 
band, ^ 7''° 
And spurns her child aside. 



" Rake out the red coals, goodman, — 
For there the child shall lie, 

Till the black witch comes to fetch her 
And both up chimney fly. 

"It's never my own little daughter. 
It's never my own," she said; 

"The witches have stolen my Anna, 
And left me an imp instead. 

" Oh, fair and sweet was my baby, 800 
Blue eyes, and hair of gokl; 

But this is ugly and wrinkk'd. 
Cross, and cunning, and okl. 

" I hate the touch of her fingers, 
I hate the feel of her skin; 

It's not the milk from my bosom, 
But my blood, that she sucks in. 

" My face grows sharp with the tor- 
ment; 
Look ! my arms are skin and l)one ! 
Rake open the red coals, goodman, 
And the witch shall have lier 
own. 811 

" She'll come when she hears it crying, 
In the shape of an owl or bat. 

And she'll bring us our darling Anna 
In place of her screeching brat." 



Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton, 
Laid his hand upon her head: 

"Thy sorrow is great, O woman! 
I sorrow with thee," he said. 

"The paths to trouble are many, 820 
And never but one sure way 

Leads out to the light beyond it: 
My poor wife, let us pray." 

Then he said to the great All-Father, 
"Thy daughter is weak and blind; 

Let her sight come back, and clothe 
her 
Once more in her right mind. 

" Lead her out of this evil shadow, 

Out of these fancies wild; 
Let the holy love of the mother 8.,o 

Turn again to her child. 

"Make her lips like the lips of Mary 
Kissing her blessed Son; 



3»2 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 




" Lead her out of this evil shadow " 



Let her hands, hke the hands of 
Jesus, 
Rest on her Uttle one. 

" Comfort the soul of thy handmaid. 

Open lier prison-door, 
And thine shall be all the glory 

And praise forever more." 

Then into the face of its mother 840 
The baby looked up and smiled; 

And the cloud of her soul was 
lifted, 
And she knew her little child. 

A beam of the slant west sunshine 
Made the wan face almost fair. 

Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder 
And the rings of pale gold hair. 

She kissed it on lip and forehead, 
She kissed it on cheek and chin, 

And she bared her snow-wliite bosom 
To the lips so pale and thin. 851 



Oh, fair on her bridal morning 
Was the maid who blushed 
smiled. 

But fairer to Ezra Dalton 

Looked the mother of his child, 



and 



With more than a lover's fondness 
He stooped to her worn young face, 

And the nursing child and the mother 
He folded in one embrace. 

''Blessed be God!" he murmured. 860 
" Blessed be God!" she said; 

" For I see, who once was blinded, — 
I live, who once was dead. 

" Now mount and ride, my good- 
man, 

As thou lovest thy own soul ! 
Woe's me, if my wicked fancies 

Be the death of Goody Cole !" 

His horse he saddled and bridled, 
And into the night rode he, 



THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH 



3^3 



Now through the great black wood- 
land, 870 
Now by the white-beached sea. 

He rode through the silent clearings, 
He came to the ferry wide, 

And thrice he called to the boatman 
Asleep on the other side. 

He set his horse to the river. 
He swam to Newbury town. 

And he called up Justice Sewall 
In his nightcap and his gown. 

And the grave and worshipful justice 
(Upon whose soul be peace !) 881 

Set his name to the jailer's warrant 
For Goodwife Cole's release. 

Then through the night the hoof-beats 
Went sounding hke a flail; 

And Goody Cole at cockcrow 
Came forth from Ipswich jail. 



" Here is a rhyme: I hardly dare 

To venture on its theme worn out ; 
What seems so sweet by Doon and 
Ayr 8go 

Sounds simply silly hereabout; 
And pipes by lips Arcadian blown 
Are only tin horns at our own. 
Yet still the muse of pastoral walks 

with us, 
While Hosea Biglow sings, our new 
Theocritus." 



THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH 

In sky and wave the white clouds 
swam. 

And the blue hills of Nottingham 
Through gaps of leafy green 
Across the lake were seen, 

When, in the shadow of the ash 000 
That dreams its dream in Attitash, 
In the warm summer weather, 
Two maidens sat together. 

They sat and watched in idle mood 
The gleam and shade of lake and wood ; 

The beach the keen light smote, 

The white sail of a boat; 



Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, 
In sweetness, not in nmsic, dying; 
Hardback, and virgin's-l)o\ver. 010 
And white-spiked clethra-flower. 

With careless ears they heard the 

plash 
And breezy wash of Attitash, 

The wood-bird's plaintive cry, 

The locust's sharp reply. 

And teased the while, with playful 

hand. 
The shaggy dog of Newfoundland, 

Whose uncouth frolic spilled 

Their l)askpts berry-filled. 

Then one, the beauty of whose eyes 
Was evermore a great surprise, <>2i 
Tossed back her (lueenly head, 
And lightly laughing, said: 

" No bridegroom's hand be mine to hold 
That is not lined with yellow gold; 

I tread no cottage-floor; 

I own no lover poor. 

" My love must come on silken wings, 
With bridal lights of diamond rings, 
Not foul with kitchen smirch, 030 
With tallow-dip for torch." 

The other, on whose modest head 
Was lesser dower of beauty slied, 
With look for home-hearths meet, 
And voice exceeding s^^eet, 

Answered, "We will not rivals be; 

Take thou the gold, leave love to me; 
Mine be the cottage small, 
And thine the rich man's hall. 

"I know, indeed, that wealth is good; 

But lowly roof and simple food, 041 
With Tove that hath no doubt. 
Are more than gold without." 

Hard bv a farmer hale and yoimg 
His cradle in the rye-field swimg. 
Tracking the yellow jilain 
With windrows of rii>e grain. 

And still, whene'er he paused to wii(>t 
His scythe, the sidelong glaiu-e he met 
Of large dark eyes, where strove q-jo 
False pride and secret love. 



3H 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Be strong, young mower of the grain; 
That love shall overmatch disdain, 

Its instincts soon or late 

The heart shall vindicate. 

In blouse of gray, with fishing-rod, 
Half screened by leaves, a stranger 
trod 
The margin of the pond, 
Watcliing the group beyond. 

The supreme hours unnoted come; 

Unfelt tlie turning tides of doom; 961 
And so the maids laughed on. 
Nor dreamed what Fate liad done, — 

Xor knew tlie step was Destiny's 
That rustled in the birchen trees, 

As, with their lives forecast, 

Fisher and mower passed. 

Erelong by lake and rivulet side 
The summer roses paled and died. 

And Autumn's fingers shed 970 

The maple's leaves of red. 

Through the long gold-hazed after- 
noon. 

Alone, l)ut for the diving loon. 
The partridge in the brake. 
The black duck on the lake. 

Beneath the sliadow of the ash 
Sat man and maid by Attitasli; 
And earth and air made room 
For human hearts to bloom. 

Soft spread the carpets of the sod, 080 
And scarlet-oak and golden-rod 

With blushes and with smiles 

Lit up the forest aisles. 

The mellow light the lake aslant. 
The pebbled margin's ripple-chant 
Attempered and low-toned. 
The tender mystery owned. 

And through the dream the lovers 

dreamed 
Sweet sounds stole in and soft lights 
streamed; 
The sunshine seemed to bless, 990 
The air was a caress. 

Not she who lightly lauglied is there 
With scornful toss "of midnight hair, 



Her dark, disdainful eyes. 
And proud lip worldly-wise. 

Her haughty vow is still unsaid. 
But all she dreamed and coveted 
Wears, half to her surprise. 
The youthful farmer's guise ! 

With more than all her old-time pride 
She walks the rye-field at his side, looi 
Careless of cot or hall. 
Since love transfigures all. 

Rich beyond dreams, the vantage 

ground 
Of life is gained; her hands have found 

The talisman of old 

That changes all to gold. 

While she who could for love dispense 
With all its glittering accidents. 
And trust her heart alone, loio 

Finds love and gold her own. 

What wealth can buy or art can build 
Awaits her; but her cup is filled 

Even now unto the brim; 

Her world is love and him ! 



The while he heard, the Book-man 
drew 
A length of make-believing face, 
With smothered mischief laughing 
through : 
'' Why, you shall sit in Ramsay's 
place, 
And, with his Gentle Shepherd, 
keep ' 1020 

On Yankee hills immortal sheep. 
While love-lorn swains and maids the 

seas beyond 
Hold dreamy tryst around your 
huckleberry -pond." 

The Traveller laughed: "Sir Gala- 
had 
Singing of love the Trouvere's 
lay ! 

How should he know the blindfold 
lad 
From one of Vulcan's forge- 
boys?"— "Nay, 

He better sees who stands outside 

Than they who in procession ride," 



KALLUNDBORG CHURCH 



315 



The Reader answered: "selectmen 
and squire 1030 

Miss, while they make, the show that 
wayside folks admire. 

" Here is a wild tale of the North, 
Our travelled friend will own as 
one 
Fit for a Norland Christmas hearth 

And lips of Christian Andersen. 
They tell it in the valleys green 
Of the fair island he has seen, 
Low lying off the pleasant Swedish 

shore, 
Washed by the Baltic Sea, and 
watched by Elsinore." 1039 



KALLUNDBORG CHURCH 

"Tie stille, barn min! 
Imorgen kommer Fin, 
Fa'er din, 
Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares iiine og hjerte at 
lege med! " 

Zealand Rhyme. 

" Build at Kallundborg by the sea 
A church as stately as church may be, 
And there shalt thou wed my daugh- 
ter fair," 
Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern 
Snare. 

And the Baron laughed. But Esbern 

said, 
"Though I lose my soul, I will Helva 

wed!" 
And off he strode, in his pride of will, 
To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill. 

" Build, O Troll, a church for me 
At Kallundborg by the mighty sea; 
Build it stately, and build it fair, loso 
Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare. 

But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is 

wrought 
By Trolls of the Hills, O man, for 

naught. 
What wilt thou give for thy church so 

fair?" 
"Set thy own price," quoth Esbern 

Snare. 

" When Kallundborg church is builded 
well, 



Thou nmst the name of its builder tell, 
Or thy heart and thy eyes nmst be 

my boon." 
"Build," said Esbern, "and build it 

soon." 

By night and by day tiie Troll 
wrought on; ,060 

He hewed the timbers, he piled the 
stone; 

But day l)y day, as the walls rose fair, 

Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare. 

He listened by night, he watched by 

day, 
He sought and thought, but he dared 

not pray; 
In vain he called on the EUe-maids 

shy, 
And the Neck and the Nis gave no 

reply. 

Of his evil bargain far and wide 

A rumor ran through the country- 
side; 

And Helva of Nesvek, young and 
fair, 1070 

Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare. 

And now the church was wellnigh 

done; 
One pillar it lacked, and one alone; 
And the grim Troll muttered, " Fool 

thou art! 
To-morrow gives me thy eyes and 

heart!" 

By Kallundborg in black despair, 
Through wood and meadow, walked 

Esbern Snare, 
Till, worn and weary, the strong man 

sank 
Under the birches on ITlshoi bank. 

At his last day's work he heard the 

Troll 'o«o 

Hammer and delve in the quarry's 

hole; 
Before him the church stood large and 

fair: 
" I have builded my tomb, ' said 

Esbern Snare. 

And he closed his eyes the sight to 

hide, . 

When he heard a light step at his side: 



3i6 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



" O Esbern Snare ! " a sweet voice said, 
"Would I might die now in thy 
stead!" 

With a grasp by love and by fear 

made strong, 
He held her fast, and he held her long; 
With the beating heart of a bird 

afeard, 1090 

She hid her face in his flame-red beard. 

"O love!" he cried, "let me look 

to-day 
In thine eyes ere mine are plucked 

away; 
Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy 

heart 
Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart ! 

" I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee ! 
Pray that the Lord Christ pardon 

me!" 
But fast as she prayed, and faster still. 
Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill. 

He knew, as he wrought, that a loving 
heart noo 

Was somehow baffling his evil art; 

For more than spell of Elf or Troll 

Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's 
soul. 

And Esbern listened, and caught the 

sound 
Of a Troll-wife singing underground : 
"To-morrow comes Fine, father thine: 
Lie still and hush thee, baby mine! 

" Lie still, my darling ! next sunrise 
Thou 'It play with Esbern Snare's 

heart and eyes ! " 
"Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that 

your game? mo 

Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his 

name!" 

The Troll he heard him, and hurried on 

To Kallundborg church with the lack- 
ing stone. 

"Too late, Gaffer Fine!" cried Es- 
bern Snare; 

And Troll and pillar vanished in air ! 

That nigiit the harvesters heard the 

sound 
Of a woman sobbing underground, 



And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud 

with blame 
Of the careless singer who told his 

name. 

Of the Troll of the Church they sing 
the rune 1120 

By the Northern Sea in the harvest 
moon; 

And the fishers of Zealand hear him 
still 

Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill. 

And seaward over its groves of birch 
Still looks the tower of Kallundborg 

church. 
Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair. 
Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern 

Snare ! 



"What," asked the Traveller, 
" would our sires. 
The old Norse story-tellers, say 
Of sun-graved pictures, ocean 
wires, 1130 

And smoking steamboats of to- 
day? 
And this, O lady, by your leave, 
Recalls your song of yester eve: 
Pray, let us have that Cable-hymn 

once more." 
"Hear, hear!" the Book-man cried, 
" the lady has the floor. 

" These noisy waves below perhaps 
To such a strain will lend their 
ear, 
With softer voice and lighter lapse 
Come stealing up the sands to 
hear. 
And what they once refused to 
do 1140 

For old King Knut accord to you. 
Nay, even the fishes shall your lis- 
teners be, 
As once, the legend runs, they heard 
St. Anthony." 



THE CABLE HYMN 

O LONELY bay of Trinity, 

O dreary shores, give ear! 
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea 

The voice of God to hear 1 



THE CABLE HYMN 



317 




" Before him the church stood larpe and fair 



From world to world His couriers fly, 
Thought-winged and shod with fire; 

The angel of His stormy sky 1150 

Rides down the sunken wire. 

What saith the herald of the Lord ? 

"The world's long strife is done; 
Close wedded by that mystic cord, 

Its continents are one. 

" And one in heart, as one in blood. 

Shall all her peoples be; 
The hands of human brotherhood 

Are clasped beneath the sea. 



"Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's 
plain >'6o 

And Asian mountains borne, 
The vigor of the Northern brain 

Siiall nerve the world outworn. 

"From clime to clime, from shore to 
sliore, 

Shall tlirill the magic thread; 
The new Prometheus steals once more 

The fire that wakes the dead." 

Throb on, strong pulse of thvmder! beat 
From answering beach to beach; 



3i8 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, 1 1 70 
And melt the chains of each ! 

Wild terror of the sky above, 
(Hide tamed and dumb below! 

Hear jj;eiitly, Ocean's carrier-dove, 
Th}' errands to and fro. 

Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, 

Ik'neath the deep so far, 
The l)ridal robe of earth's accord. 

The funeral shroud of war ! 

For lo ! the fall of Ocean's wall nSo 
Space mocked and time outrun; 

And round the world the thought of all 
Is as the thought of one ! 

The poles unite, the zones agree, 
The tongues of striving cease; 

As on the Sea of Galilee 

The Christ is whispering, Peace ! 



" Glad prophecy ! to this at last," 
The Reader said, " shall all things 
come. 
Forgotten be the bugle's blast, 1190 

And battle-music of the drum. 
A little while the world may run 
Its old mad way, with needle-gun 
And ironclad, but truth, at last, shall 

reign : 
The cradle-song of Christ was never 
sung in vain!" 

Shifting his scattered papers, 
"Here," 
He said, as died the faint applause, 
" Is something that I found last year 
Down on the island known as 
Orr's. 
I had it from a fair-haired girl 1200 
Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl 
(As if by some droll freak of circum- 
stance) , 
Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet 
Stowe's romance." 



THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPS- 
WELL 

What flocks the outer gray beyond 
The sundown's golden trail? 



The white flash of a sea-bird's wing. 

Or gleam of slanting sail ? 
Let young eyes watch from Neck and 
Point, 

And sea-worn elders pray, — 
The ghost of what was once a ship 

Is sailing up the bay ! 12 n 

From gray sea-fog, from icy drift. 

From peril and from pain. 
The home-bound fisher greets thy 
lights, 

O hundred-harbored Maine ! 
But many a keel shall seaward turn. 

And many a sail outstand. 
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship 
looms 

Against the dusk of land. 

She rounds the headland's bristling 
pines; 1220 

She threads the isle-set bay; 
No spur of breeze can speed her on, 

Nor ebb of tide delay. 
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr 

Who tell her date and name, 
Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards 

Who hewed her oaken frame. 

What weary doom of baffled quest, 

Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine? 
What makes thee in the haunts of 
home 1230 

A wonder and a sign? 
No foot is on thy silent deck, 

Upon thy helm no hand; 
No ripple hath the soundless wind 

That smites thee from the land! 

For never comes the ship to port, 

Howe'er the breeze may be; 
Just when she nears the waiting shore 

She drifts again to sea. 
No tack of sail, nor turn of helm, 1240 

Nor sheer of veering side; 
Stern-fore she drives to sea and night. 

Against the wind and tide. 

In vain o'er Harps well Neck the star 

Of evening guides her in; 
In vain for her the lamps are lit 

Within thy tower, Seguin ! 
In vain the harbor-boat shall hail, 

In vain the pilot call; 
No hand shall reef her spectral sail, 1250 

Or let her anchor fall. 



THE PALATINE 



319 



Shake, brown old wives, with dreary 
joy, 

Your gray-head hints of iU; 
And, over sick-beds whispering low, 

Your prophecies fulhl. 
Some home amid yon birchen trees 

Shall drape its door with woe; 
And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, 

The burial boat shall row ! 



The Book-man said. " A ghostly 
touch 
The legend has. I'm glad to see 
Your flying Yankee beat the 
Dutch." 
"Well, here is something of the 
sort ,,80 

Which one midsummer day I 
caught 




" The ghost of what was once a ship " 



From Wolf Neck and from Flying 
Point, 1260 

From island and from main. 
From sheltered cove and tided creek. 

Shall glide the funeral train. 
The dead-boat with the bearers four. 

The mourners at her stern, — 
And one shall go the silent way 

Who shall no more return! 

And men shall sigh, and women weep, 

Whose dear ones pale and pine, 
And sadly over sunset seas 1270 

Await the ghostly sign. 
They know not that its sails are filled 

By pity's tender breath, 
Nor see the Angel at the helm 

Who steers the Ship of Death ! 



" Chill as a down-east breeze should 
be," 



In Narragansett Bay, for hick of fish." 

" We wait," the Traveller said; " serve 

hot or cold your dish." 



THE PALATINE 

Leagues north, as fly tlie gull and 

auk, 
Point Juditii watches with eye of 

hawk ; 
Leagues south, thy beacon flames, 

Montauk ! 

Lonely and wind-sliom, wood-for- 
saken, 
With never a tree for Spring to waken, 
For tryst of lovers or farewells taken, 

Circled by waters that never freeze. 
Beaten bV billow and swept by bree/e, 
Lieth the island of Manisees, ^^92 



320 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



vSet at the mouth of the Sound to hold 
The coast h<!;lit!5 up on its turret old, 
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould. 

Dreary the land when gust and sleet 
At its doors and windows howl and 

l)eat, 
And Winter laughs at its fires of peat ! 

But in summer time, when pool and 

pond, 
Held in the laps of valleys fond, 1300 
Are blue as the glimpses of sea be- 
yond; 

When the hills are sweet with the 
brier-rose, 

And, hid in the warm, soft dells, un- 
close 

Flowers the mainland rarely knows; 

When boats to their morning fishing 

And, held to the wind and slanting low, 
Whitening and darkening the small 
sails show, — 

Then is that lonely island fair; 

And the pale health-seeker findeth 

there 
The wine of life in its pleasant air. 13 10 

No greener valleys the sun invite, 
On smoother beaches no sea-birds 

light, 
No blue waves shatter to foam more 

white ! 

There, circling ever their narrow range, 
(Quaint tradition and legend strange 
Live on unchallenged, and know no 
change. 

( )ld wives spinning their webs of tow. 

Or rocking weirdly to and fro 

In and out of the peat's dull glow, 

And old men mending their nets of 
twine, 1320 

Talk together of dream and sign. 
Talk of the lost ship Palatine, — 

The ship that, a hundred years before, 
Freighted deep with its goodly store, 
In the gales of the equinox went 
ashore. 



The eager islanders one by one 
Counted the shots of her signal gun, 
And heard the crash when she drove 
right on! 

Into the teeth of death she sped: 1329 
(May God forgive the hands that fed 
The false lights over the rocky Head !) 

O men and brothers! what sights 

were there ! 
White upturned faces, hands stretched 

in prayer ! 
Where waves had pity, could ye not 

spare ? 

Down swooped the wreckers, like 

birds of prey 
Tearing the heart of the ship away, 
And the dead had never a word to say. 

And then, with ghastly shimmer and 

shine 
Over the rocks and the seething brine, 
They burned the wreck of the Pala- 
tine. 1340 

In their cruel hearts, as they home- 
ward sped, 

"The sea and the rocks are dumb," 
they said; 

"There'll be no reckoning with the 
dead." 

But the year went round, and when 

once more 
Along their foam-white curves of shore 
They heard the line-storm rave and 

roar. 

Behold! again, with shimmer and shine, 
Over the rocks and the seething brine. 
The flaming wreck of the Palatine ! 

So, haply in fitter words than these, 
Mending their nets on their patient 
knees, 1351 

They tell the legend of Manisees. 

Nor looks nor tones a doubt betray; 
" It is known to us all," they quietly 

say; 
" We too have seen it in our day. ' ' 

Is there, then, no death for a word 
once spoken? 



THE PALATINE 



321 




" They burned the wreck of the Palatine " 



Was never a deed but left its token 
Written on tables never broken? 

Do the elements subtle reflections give ? 
Do pictures of all the ages live 1360 
On Nature's infinite negative, 

Which, half in sport, in malice half, 
She shows at times, with shudder or 

laugh, 
Phantom and shadow in photograph ? 

For still, on many a moonless night. 
From Kingston Head and from Mon- 

tauk light 
The spectre kindles and burns in sight. 



Now low and dim, now clear and 

higher. 
Leaps up the terrible (Jliost of Fire, 
Then, slowly sinking, the ilaines ex- 
pire. »,?70 

And the wise Sound skippers, though 

skies be fine. 
Reef their sails when they see tlie sign 
Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine ! 



"A fitter tale to scream than sing," 
The Book-man said. "Well, 
fancy, then," 



322 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



The Reader answered, "on tlio 
wing 
Tlie sea-birds shriek it, not for 
men, 
But in tlie car of wave and l)reeze ! " 
The Traveller mused: " Your Mani- 
sees 
Is fairy-land: off Narragansett sliore 
Who ever saw the isle or heard its 
name before? 1381 

" 'T is some strange land of Fly- 
away, 
Whose dreamy shore the ship be- 
guiles; 
St. Brandan's in its sea-mist gray. 
Or sunset loom of Fortunate 
Isles!" 
" No ghost, l)ut solid turf and rock 
Is the good island known as Block," 
The Reader said. " For beauty and 

for ease 
I chose its Indian name, soft-flowing 
Manisees ! 

"But let it pass; here is a bit 1390 

Of unrhymed story, with a hint 
Of the old preaching mood in it, 

The sort of sidelong moral squint 
Our friend objects to, which has 

grown, 
I fear, a luibit of my own. 
'T was written when the Asian plague 

drew near, 
And the land held its breath and paled 
with sudden fear." 



ABRAHAM DAVENPORT 

/ In the old days (a custom laid aside 
With breeclies and cocked hats) the 

people sent 
Their wisest men to make the public 

laws. 1400 

And so, froni a brown homestead, 

where tlie Sound 
Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas, 
Waved over by the woods of Rippo- 

wams. 
And hallowed by pure lives and tran- 
quil deaths, 
Stamford sent up to the councils of the 

State 
Wisdom and grace in Abraham 

Davenport. 



'T was on a May-day of the far old 

year 
Seventeen hundred eighty, that there 

fell 
Over the bloom and sweet life of the 

Spring, 
Over the fresh earth and the heaven 

of noon, 1410 

A horror of great darkness, like the 

night 
In day of which the Norland sagas 

tell, — 
The Twilight of the Gods. The low- 
hung sky 
Was black with ominous clouds, save 

where its rim 
Was fringed with a dull glow, like that 

which climljs 
The crater's sides from the red hell 

below. 
Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn- 
yard fowls 
Roosted ; the cattle at the pasture bars 
Lowed, and looked homeward; bats 

on leathern wings 
Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor 

died; 1420 

Men prayed, and women wept; all 

ears grew sharp 
To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet 

shatter 
The black sky, that the dreadful face 

of Christ 
Might look from the rent clouds, not 

as he looked 
A loving guest at Bethany, but stern 
As Justice and inexorable Law. 

Meanwhile in the old State House, 

dim as ghosts, 
Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, 
Trembling beneath their legislative 

robes. 
"It is the Lord's Great Day ! Let us 

adjourn," 1430 

Some said; and then, as if with one 

accord, 
All eyes were turned to Abraham 

Davenport. 
He rose, slow cleaving with his steady 

voice 
The intolerable hush. " This well may 

be 
The Day of Judgment which the 

world awaits; 
But be it so or not, I only know 



ABRAHAM DAVENPORT 




My present duty, and my Lord's 
command 

To occupy till He come. So at the post 

Where He hath set, me in His provi- 
dence, 

I choose, for one, to meet Him face to 
face, — 1440 

No faithless servant frightened from 
my task, 

But ready when the Lord of the har- 
vest calls; 

And therefore, with all reverence, I 
would say, 

Let God do His work, we will see to 
ours. 

Bring iri'"the candles." And they 
brought them in. 

Then by the flaring lights the 
Speaker read, 



Albeit with husky voice and shaking 
hands. 

An act to amend an act to regulate 

The shad and alewivc fisheries. 
Whereupon 

Wisely and well spake Ahraliam 
Davenport, us© 

Straight te-the (juestion, with no fig- 
ures of speech 

Save the ten Arab signs, yet not with- 
out 

The shrewd dry humor natural to the 
man : 

His awe-struck colleiigues listening all 
the while, 

Between the pauses of his argument. 

To hear the thunder of the wrath of 
God 

Break from the hollow trumpet of the 
cloud. 



3^4 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH 



And there he stands in memory to 

til is day, 
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half 

seen 
Against the background of unnatural 

dark, '4<>o 

A witness to the ages as they pass, 
That simple duty hath no place for 



fear. 



> 



^ 



He ceased: just then the ocean 
seemed 
To lift a half-faced moon in sight; 
And, shore-ward, o'er the waters 
gleamed. 
From crest to crest, a line of 
light. 
Such as of old, with solemn awe, 
The fishers l)y Gennesaret saw, 
When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son 

of God, 
Tracking the waves with light wher- 
e'er his sandals trod. 1470 

Silently for a space each eye 

Upon that sudden glory turned: 
Cool from the land the breeze blew 
by. 
The tent-ropes flapped, the long 
beach churned 
Its waves to foam; on either hand 
Stretched, far as sight, the hills of 
sand; 
With bays of marsh, and capes of bush 

and tree. 
The wood's black shore-line loomed 
beyond the meadowy sea. 

The lady rose to leave. " One song, 

Or hymn," they urged, "before 

we part." 1480 

And she, with lips to which belong 

Sweet intuitions of all art. 
Gave to the winds of night a strain 
Which they who heard would hear 
again ; 
And to her voice the solemn ocean 

lent. 
Touching its harp of sand, a deep ac- 
companiment. 

THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 

The harp at Nature's advent strung 
Has never ceased to play; 



The song the stars of morning sung 
Has never died away. 1490 

And prayer is made, and praise is given, 
By ali things near £,nd far; 

The ocean looketh up to heaven, 
And mirrors every star. 

Its waves are kneeling on the strand, 
As kneels the human knee, ' 

Their white locks bowing to the sand, 
The priesthood of the sea ! 

They pour their glittering treasures 
forth. 

Their gifts of pearl they bring, 1500 
And all the listening hills of earth 

Take up the song they sing. 

The green earth sends her incense up 
From many a mountain shrine; 

From folded leaf and dewy cup 
She pours her sacred wine. 

The mists above the morning rills 
Rise white as wings of prayer; 

The altar-curtains of the hills 

Are sunset's purple air. 1510 

The winds with hymns of praise are 
loud, 

Or low with sobs of pain, — 
The thunder-organ of the cloud, 

The dropping tears of rain. 

With drooping head and branches 
crossed 

The twilight forest grieves, 
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost 

From all its sunlit leaves. 

The blue sky is the temple's arch, 
Its transept earth and air, 1520 

The music of its starry march 
The chorus of a prayer. 

So Nature keeps the reverent frame 
With which her years began, 

And all her signs and voices shame 
The prayerless heart of man. 



The singer ceased. The moon's 
white rays 
Fell on the rapt, still face of 
her. 



THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 



325 



" Allah il Allah ! He hath praise 
From all things," said the Trav- 
eller. 1530 
" Oft from the desert's silent nights, 
And mountain hymns of sunset 
lights, 
My heart has felt rebuke, as in his tent 
The Moslem's prayer has shamed my 
Christian knee unbent." 

He paused, and lo ! far, faint, and 
slow 



The bells in Newbury's steeples 
tolled 
The twelve dead hours; the lamp 
burned low; 
The singer sought her canvas 
fold. 
One sadly said, " At l)reak of day 
We strike our tent and go our way." 
But one made answer cheerily, " Never 
fear, ,5^, 

We'll pitcli this tent of ours in type 
another year." 




William Lloyd Garrison 

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Champion of those who groan beneath 

Oppression's iron hand: 
In view of penury, hate, and death, 

I see tiiee fearless stand. 
Still i)earinfi; up thy lofty brow, 

In the steadfast strength of truth, 



In manhood sealing well the vow 
And promise of thy youth. 

Go on, for thou hast chosen well; 

On in the strength of God ! 
Long as one human heart shall 
swell 

Beneath the tyrant's rod. 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 



327 



Speak in a slumbering nation's ear, 
As thou hast ever spoken, 

Until the dead in sin shall hear, 
The fetter's link be broken ! 

I love thee with a brother's love, 

I feel my pulses thrill. 
To mark thy spirit soar above 

The cloud of human ill. 20 

My heart hath leaped to answer thine, 

And echo back thy words. 
As leaps the warrior's at the shine 

And flash of kindred swords ! 

They tell me thou art rash and vain, 

A searcher after fame; 
That thou art striving l)ut to gain 

A long-enduring name; 
That thou hast nerved the Afric's 
hand 

And .steeled the Afric's heart, 30 
To shake aloft his vengeful brand, 

And rend his chain apart. 

Have I not known thee well, and read 

Thy mighty purpose long? 
And watched the trials which have 
made 

Thy human spirit strong? 
And shall the slanderer's demon 
breath 

Avail with one like me. 
To dim the sunshine of my faith 

And earnest trust in thee ? 40 

Go on, the dagger's point may glare 

Amid thy pathway's gloom; 
The fate which sternly threatens there 

Is glorious martyrdom ! 
Then onward with a martyr's zeal; 

And wait thy sure reward 
When man to man no more shall 
kneel, 

And God alone be Lord ! 

1833 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 

'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight 
smile 
With which Heaven dreams of 
Earth, shed down 
Its beauty on the Indian isle, — 
On broad green field and white- 
walled town, 



And inland waste of rock ajid wood. 
In searching sunsliino, wild and rude', 
Rose, mellowed through the silver 

gleam, 
Soft as the landscape of a dream. 
All motionless and dewy wet. 
Tree, vine, and flower in shadow 

met: ,0 

The myrtle with its snowy bloom. 
Crossing the nightshade's solemn 

gloom, — 
The white cecropia's silver rind 
Relieved by deeper green behind, 
The orange with its fruit of gold. 
The lithe paullinia's verdant fold, 
The passion-flower with symbol holy, 
Twining its tendrils long and lowly," 
The rhexias dark, and cassia tall, " 
And proudly rising over all, 20 

The kingly palm's imperial stem. 
Crowned with its leafy diadem. 
Star-like, beneath whose sombre 

shade. 
The fiery-winged cucullo played ! 

How lovely was thine aspect, then. 

Fair island of the Western Sea ! 
Lavish of beauty, even when 
Thy brutes were happier than thy 
men. 

For they, at least, were free! 
Regardless of thy glorious clime, 30 

Unmindful of thy soil of flowers. 
The toiling negro sighed, that Time 

No faster sped his hours. 
For, by the dewy moonlight still, 
He fed the weary-turning mill. 
Or bent him in the chill morass, 
To pluck the long and tangled grji.ss, 
And hear above his scar- worn back 
The heavy slave-whip's frecjuont 

crack : 
While in his heart one evil thought 40 
In solitary madness wrought. 
One baleful fire surviving still 

The quenching of the immortal 
mind, 

One sterner passion of his kind, 
Which even fetters could not kill, 
The saviige hope, to deal, erelong, 
A vengeance bitterer than his wrong! 
Hark to that cry! long, loud, and 

shrill. 
From field and forest, rock and lull. 
Thrilling and horrible it rang, 50 

Around, beneath, above; 



328 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



The wild beast from his cavern sprang, 

The wild bird from her grove ! 
Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony 
Were mingled in that midnight cry; 
But like the lion's growl of wTath, 
When falls that hunter in his path 
Whose barbed arrow, deeply set. 
Is rankling in his bosom yet, 59 

It told of hate, full, deep, and strong. 
Of vengeance kindling out of wrong; 
It was as if the crimes of years — 
The unrequited toil, the tears, 
The shame and hate, which liken well 
Earth's garden to the nether hell — 
Had found in nature's self a tongue, 
On wliich the gathered horror hung; 
As if from cliff, and stream, and glen 
Burst on the startled ears of men 
That voice which rises unto God, 70 
Solemn and stern, — the cry of blood ! 
It ceased, and all was still once more. 
Save ocean chafing on his shore. 
The sighing of the wdnd between 
The broad banana's leaves of green, 
Or bough by restless plumage shook, 
Or murmuring voice of mountain 
brook. 

Brief was the silence. Once again 

Pealed to the skies that frantic yell. 
Glowed on the heavens a fiery stain, 80 

And flashes rose and fell; 
And painted on the blood-red sky. 
Dark, naked arms were tossed on high; 
And, round the white man's lordly 
hall, 
Trod, fierce and free, the brute he 
made; 
And those who crept along the wall. 
And answered to his lightest call 
With more than spaniel dread. 
The creatures of his lawless beck. 
Were trampling on his very neck ! 90 
And on the night-air, wild and clear. 
Rose woman's shriek of more than 

fear; 
For bloodied arms were round her 

thrown. 
And dark cheeks pressed against her 
own! 

Then, injured Afric ! for the shame 
Of thy own daughters, vengeance 

came 
Full on the scornful hearts of those. 
Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes, 



And to thy hapless children gave gg 
One choice, — pollution or the grave ! 
Where then was he whose fiery zeal 
Had taught the trampled heart to 

feel. 
Until despair itself grew strong. 
And vengeance fed its torch from 

wrong ? 
Now, when the thunderbolt is speed- 
ing; _ 
Now, w^hen oppression s heart is bleed- 
ing; 
Now, when the latent curse of Time 
Is raining down in fire and blood. 
That curse which, through long years 
of crime, 
Has gathered, drop by drop, its 
flood, no 
Why strikes he not, the foremost one, 
Where murder's sternest deeds are 
done ? 

He stood the aged palms beneath. 

That shadowed o'er his humble 
door, 
Listening, with half-suspended breath, 
To the wild sounds of fear and death, 

Toussaint L'Ouverture ! 
What marvel that his heart beat high ! 

The blow for freedom had been 
given. 
And blood had answered to the cry 120 

Which Earth sent up to Heaven ! 
What marvel that a fierce delight 
Smiled grimly o'er his brow of night. 
As groan and shout and bursting flame 
Told where the midnight tempest 

came. 
With blood and fire along its van. 
And death behind ! he was a Man ! 

Yes, dark - souled chieftain ! if the 
light 

Of mild Religion's heavenly ray 
Unveiled not to thy mental sight 130 

The lowlier and the purer way, 
In which the Holy Sufferer trod. 

Meekly amidst the sons of crime; 
That calm reliance upon God 

For justice in His own good time; 
That gentleness to which belongs 
Forgiveness for its many wrongs. 
Even as the primal martyr, kneeling 
For mercy on the evil-dealing; 139 
Let not the favored white man name 
Thy stern appeal, with words of blame. 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 



329 



Has he not, with the hght of heaven 
Broadly around him, made the 
same? 
Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven, 
And gloried in his ghastly shame ? 
Kneeling amidst his brother's blood, 
To offer mockery unto God, 
As if the High and Holy One 
Could smile on deeds of murder done ! 
As if a human sacrifice 150 

Were purer in His holy eyes. 
Though offered up by Christian hands, 
Than the foul rites of Pagan lands ! 



Sternly, amidst his household band, 
His carbine grasped within his hand, 

The white man stood, prepared and 
still. 
Waiting the shock of maddened men, 
Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when 

The horn winds through their cav- 
emed hill. 
And one was weeping in his sight, 160 

The sweetest flower of all the isle, 
The bride who seemed but yester- 
night 

Love's fair embodied smile. 
And, clinging to her trembling knee. 
Looked up the form of infancy, 
With tearful glance in either face 
The secret of its fear to trace 

"Ha! stand or die!" The white man's 

eye 
His stead}^ musket gleamed along, 
As a tall Negro hastened nigh, 170 

With fearless step and strong. 
"What ho, Toussaint!" A moment 

more. 
His shadow crossed the lighted floor. 
" Away ! " he shouted; " fly with me. 
The white man's bark is on the sea; 
Her sails must catch the seaward 

wind, 
For sudden vengeance sweeps behind. 
Our brethren from their graves have 

spoken. 
The yoke is spumed, the chain is 

broken ; 
On all the hills our fires are glowing, 
Through all the vales red blood is 

flowing! '^' 

No more the mocking White shall rest 
His foot upon the Negro's l^reast; 
No more, at morn or eve, shall drip 



The warm blood from the driver's 

whip : 
Yet, though Toussaint has vengeance 

sworn 
For all the wrongs his race have borne, 
Though for each drop of Negro blood 
The white man's veins shall pour a 

flood; 
Not all alone the sense of ill igo 

Around his heart is lingering still. 
Nor deeper can the white man feel 
The generous warmth of grateful zeal. 
Friends of the Negro ! fly with me, 
The path is open to the sea: 
Away, for life!" He spoke, and 

pressed 
The young child to his manly breast, 
As, headlong, through the cracking 

cane, 
Down swept the dark insurgent train, 
Drunken and grim, with shout and yell 
Howled through the dark, like sounds 

from hell. aoi 

Far out, in peace, the white man's .sail 
Swayed free before the sunrise gale. 
Cloud-like that island hung afar, 

Along the bright horizon's verge, 
O'er which the curse of servile war 

Rolled its red torrent, surge on 
surge ; 
And he, the Negro champion, where 

In the fierce tumult struggk>d he ? 
Go trace him by the fiery glare 210 
Of dwelhngs in the midnight air. 
The yells of triumph and despair, 

The streams that crimson to the sea ! 

Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb, 

Beneath Besancon's alien sky. 
Dark Haytien! for the time shall 
come, 

Yea, even now is nigh, 
When, everywhere, thy name shall be 
Redeemed from color's infamy; 210 
And men sliall learn to speak of thee 
As one of earth's great spirits. l)orn 
In servitude, and lun-sed in scorn, 
Casting aside the weary weight 
And fetters of its low estate, 
In that strong majesty of soul 

Which knows no color, tongue, or 
clime. 
Which still hath spurned tiie base con- 
trol 

Of tyrants tlirough all time ! 



33^ 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Fur other hands than mine may 

wreathe 229 

The huirel round thy brow of death, 
And speak thy praise, as one whose 

word 
A thousand fiery spirits stirred, 
Who crushed his foeman as a worm, 
Whose step on human hearts fell firm: 
I^e mine the better task to find 
A tribute for thy lofty mind, 
Amidst whose gloomy vengeance 

shone 
Some milder virtues all thine own, 
Some gleams of feeling pure and 

warm, 
Like sunshine on a sky of storm, 240 
Proofs that tlie Negro's heart retains 
Some nobleness amid its cliains, — 
That kindness to the wronged is never 

Without its excellent reward, 
Holy to human-kind and ever 
Acceptable to God. 



THE SLAVE-SHIPS 

"That fatal, that perfidious bark, 
Built i' the eclipse, and rigged with curses 
dark." 

Milton's Lycidas. 

"All ready?" cried the captain; 

" Ay, ay ! " the seamen said; 
" Heave up the worthless lubbers, — 

The dying and the dead." 
Up from the slave-ship's prison 

Fierce, bearded heads were thrust: 
" Now let the sharks look to it, — 

Toss up the dead ones first!" 

Corpse after corpse came up, — 

Death had been busy there; 10 

Where evt^ry lilow is mercy, 

Why should the spoiler spare? 
Corpse after corpse they cast 

Sullenly from the ship, 
Yet bloody with the traces 

Of fetter-link and whip. 

Gloomily stood the captain, 

With his arms upon his breast, 
With his cold brow sternly knotted 

And his iron lip compressed. 20 

"Are all the dead dogs over?" 

Growled through that matted lip; 
"The blind ones are no better. 

Let's lighten the good ship." 



Hark ! from the ship's dark bosom, 

The very sounds of hell ! 
The ringing clank of iron. 

The maniac's short, sharp yell ! 
The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled; 

The starving infant's moan, 30 

The horror of a breaking heart 

Poured through a mother's groan. 

Up from that loathsome prison 

The stricken blind ones came; 
Below, had all been darkness, 

Above, was still the same. 
Yet the holy breath of heaven 

Was sweetly breathing there, 
And the heated brow of fever 

Cooled in the soft sea air. 40 

"Overboard with them, shipmates!" 

Cutlass and dirk were plied; 
Fettered and blind, one after one, 

Plunged down the vessel's side. 
The sabre smote above, 

Beneath, the lean shark lay, 
Waiting with wide and bloody jaw 

His quick and human prey. 

God of the earth ! what cries 

Rang upward unto thee? so 

Voices of agony and blood, 
From ship-deck and from sea. 

The last dull plunge was heard, 
The last wave caught its stain. 

And the unsated shark looked up 
' For human hearts in vain. 



Red glowed the western waters. 

The setting sun was there. 
Scattering alike on wave and cloud 

His fiery mesh of hair. 60 

Amidst a group in blindness, 

A solitary eye 
Gazed, from the burdened slaver's 
deck. 

Into that burning sky. 

" A storm," spoke out the gazer, 

" Is gathering and at hand; 
Curse on 't, I'd give my other eye 

For one firm rood of land." 
And then lie laughed, but only 

His echoed laugh replied, 70 

For the blinded and the suffering 

Alone were at his side. 



THE SLAVE-SHIPS 



33^ 




" God of the earth ! what cries ! " 



80 



Night settled on the waters, 

And on a stormy heaven, 
While fiercely on that lone ship's 
track 

The thunder-gust was driven. 
" A sail ! — thank God, a sail ! " 

And as the helmsman spoke, 
Up through the stormy murmur 

A shout of gladness broke. 

Down came the stranger vessel, 

Unheeding on her way. 
So near that on the slaver's deck 

Fell off her driven spray. 
" Ho ! for the love of mercy, 

We 're perishing and blind ! " 
A wail of utter agony 

Came back upon the wind: 



" Help us! for we are stricken 

With blindness every one; 
Ten days we've floated fearfully, 

Unnoting star or sun. 
Our ship's the slaver Leon, — 

We've but a score on Iward; 
(^ur slaves are all gone over, — 

Help, for the love of God ! " 

On livid brows of agony 

The broad red lightning shone; 
But the roar of wind and tlnuuler 

Stifled the answering groan; 
Wailed from the broken waters 

A last despairing cry. 
As, kindling in tlie stormy light, 

The stranger ship went by. 



332 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 




" The stranger ship went by " 



In the sunny Giiadaloupe 

A dark-hulled vessel lay, 
With a crew who noted never 

The nightfall or the day. 
The blossom of the orange 

Was white by every stream, no 
And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird 

Were in the warm sunbeam. 

And the sky was bright as ever. 

And the moonlight slept as well, 
On the palm-trees by the hillside. 

And the streamlet of the dell: 
And the glances of the Creole 

Were still as archly deep. 
And her smiles as full as ever 

Of passion and of sleep. 120 

But vain were bird and blossom, 

The green earth and tlie sky. 
And the smile of human faces, 

To the slaver's darkened eye; 
At tlie l)reaking of the morning. 

At the star-lit evening time, 
O'er a world of light and beauty 

Fell the blackness of his crime. 



EXPOSTULATION 

Our fellow-countrjanen in chains ! 

Slaves, in a land of light and law ! 
Slaves, crouching on the very plains 
Where rolled the storm of Free- 
dom's war ! 
A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood, 
A wail where Camden's martyrs 
fell, 
By every shrine of patriot blood. 
From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's 
well! 

By storied hill and hallowed grot, 

By mossy wood and marshy glen, 10 
Whence rang of old the rifle-shot, 
And hurrying shout of Marion's 
men! 
The groan of breaking hearts is there, 
The falling lash, the fetter's clank ! 
Slaves, slaves are breathing in that 
air 
Which old De Kalb and Sumter 
drank ! 



EXPOSTULATION 



333 




Dr. Charles Folleu (whose speecli suggested these lines). 



What ho ! our countrymen in chains ! 
The whip on woman's shrinking 
flesh ! 
Our soil yet reddening with the stains 
Caught from her scourging, warm 
and fresh ! 2° 

What! mothers from their children 
riven ! 
What! God's own image bought 
and sold ! 
Americans to market driven, 

And bartered as the brute for gold ! 

Speak ! shall their agony of prayer 
Come thrilling to our hearts in vain ? 



To us whose fathers scorned to bear 

The paltry menace of a chain; 
To us, whose boast is loud and long 

Of holy Liberty and Light; 30 

Say, shall these writhing slaves of 
Wrong 
Plead vainlv for their plundered 
Right ?'^ 

What! shall we send, with lavish 
breath. 
Our sympathies across the wave, 
Where " Manhood, ,on the field of 
death, 
Strikes for his freedom or a grave? 



334 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Shall prayers go up, and hymns be 
sung 
For Greece, the Moslem fetter 
spurning, 
And millions hail with pen and tongue 
Our light on all her altars burn- 
ing ? 40 

Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France, 
By Vcndome's pile and Sclioen- 
brun's Wall, 
And Poland, gasping on her lance. 
The impulse of our cheering call ? 
And shall the slave, beneath our eye, 
Clank o'er our fields his hateful 
chain ? 
And toss his fettered arms on high. 
And groan for Freedom's gift, in 
vain? 

Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be 

A refuge for the stricken slave ? 50 
And shall the Russian serf go free 

By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave ? 
And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane 

Relax the iron hand of pride. 
And bid his bondmen cast the chain 

From fettered soul and limb aside ? 

Shall every flap of England's flag 

Proclaim that all around are free. 
From farthest Ind to each blue crag 
That beetles o'er the Western 
Sea ? 60 

And shall we scoff at Europe's kings. 
When Freedom's fire is dim with 
us. 
And round our country's altar clings 
The damning shade of Slavery's 
curse ? 

Go, let us ask of Constantine 

To loose his grasp on Poland's 
throat; 
And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line 

To spare the struggling Suliote; 
Will not the scorching answer come 
From turbaned Turk, and scornful 
Russ: 70 

"Go, loose your fettered slaves at 
home, 
Then turn and ask the like of us ! " 

Just God ! and shall we calmly rest. 
The Christian's scorn, the heathen's 
mirth, 



Content to live the lingering jest 

And by-word of a mocking Earth ? 

Shall our own glorious land retain 

That curse which Europe scorns to 

bear? 

Shall our own brethren drag the chain 

Which not even Russia's menials 

wear ? 80 

Up, then, in Freedom's manly part, 

From gray beard eld to fiery youth, 
And on the nation's naked heart 

Scatter the living coals of Truth ! 
Up ! while ye slumber, deeper yet 

The shadow of our fame is grow- 
ing! 
Up! while ye pause, our sun may 
set 

In blood around our altars flowing ! 

Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes 
forth. 

The gathered wrath of God and 

man, 90 

Like that which wasted Egypt's earth, 

When hail and fire above it ran. 
Hear ye no warnings in the air? 

Feel ye no earthquake underneath ? 
Up, up ! why will ye slumber where 

The sleeper only wakes in death ? 

Rise now for Freedom ! not in strife 
Like that your sterner fathers 
saw, 
The awful waste of human life, 

The glory and the guilt of war: 100 
But break the chain, the yoke re- 
move, 
And smite to earth Oppression's 
rod, 
With those mild arms of Truth and 
Love, 
Made mighty through the living 
God! 

Down let the shrine of Moloch sink, 

And leave no traces where it stood; 
Nor longer let its idol drink 

His daily cup of human blood; 
But rear another altar there. 

To Truth and Love and Mercy 

given, no 

And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's 

prayer. 

Shall call an answer down from 

Heaven I 



THE YANKEE GIRL 



335 



HYMN 

WRITTEN FOR THE MEETING OF THE 
ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, AT CHAT- 
HAM STREET CHAPEL, NEW YORK, 
HELD ON THE 4tH OF THE SEVENTH 
MONTH, 1834. 

O Thou, whose presence went before 
Our fathers in their weary way, 

As with Thy chosen moved of yore 
The fire by night, the cloud by day ! 

When from each temple of the free, 
A nation's song ascends to Heaven, 

Most Holy Father ! unto Thee 

May not our humble prayer be 
given ? 

Thy children all, though hue and form 
Are varied in Thine own good will, 

With Thy own holy breathings warm, 
And fashioned in Thine image still. 

We thank Thee, Father! hill and plain 
Around us wave their fruits once 
more. 
And clustered vine and blossomed 
grain 
Are bending round each cottage 
door. 

And peace is here; and hope and love 
Are round us as a mantle thrown, 

And unto Thee, supreme above, 
The knee of prayer is bowed alone. 

But oh, for those this day can bring. 
As unto us, no joyful thrill; 

For those who, under Freedom's 
wing. 
Are bound in Slavery's fetters still : 

For those to whom Thy written word 
Of light and love is never given; 

For those whose ears have never heard 
The promise and the hope of hea- 
ven I 

For broken heart, and clouded mind, 
Whereon no human mercies fall; 

Oh, be Thy gracious love inclined, 
Who, as a Father, pitiest all! 

And grant, O Father ! that the time 
Of Earth's deliverance may be near. 



When every land and tongue and 
clime 
The message of Thy love shall hear; 

When, smitten as with fire from hea- 
ven, 
The captive's chain shall sink in 
dust, 
And to his fettered soul be given 
The glorious freedom of the just ! 



THE YANKEE GIRL 

She sings by her wheel at that low 

cottage-door. 
Which the long evening sliadow is 

stretching before. 
With a music as sweet as the music 

which seems 
Breathed softly and faint in the ear of 

our dreams ! 

How brilliant and mirthful the liglit of 

her eye. 
Like a star glancing out from the blue 

of the sky ! 
And lightly and freely her dark tresses 

play 
O'er a brow and a bosom as lovely as 

they ! 

Who comes in his pride to that low 

cottage-door, 
The haughty and rich to the hinnble 

and poor? lo 

'T is the great Southern planter, the 

master who waves 
His whip of dominion o'er hundreds 

of slaves. 

"Nay, Ellen, for shame! Let those 

Yankee fools spin, 
Who would pass for our slaves with a 

change of their skin; 
Let them toil as they will at the loom 

or the wheel, 
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar 

to feel ! 

" But thou art too lovely and precious 

a gem 
To be bound to their burdens and 

sullied by them; 
For shame, Ellen, shame, cast thy 

bondage aside, 



33^ 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And away to the South, as my bless- 
ing and pride. 20 

" Oil, come wliere no winter thy foot- 
steps can wrong, 

But whore flowers are blossoming all 
the year long, 

Where the shade of the palm-tree is 
over my liome. 

And the lemon and orange are white in 
their bloom ! 

" Oh, come to my home, where my ser- 
vants shall all 

Depart at thy bidding and come at 
thy call; 

They shall heed thee as mistress with 
trembling and awe, 

And each wish of thy heart shall be 
felt as a law." 

Oh, could ye have seen her — that 

pride of our girls — - 
Arise and cast back the dark wealtli of 

her curls, 30 

With a scorn in her eye which the 

gazer could feel. 
And a glance like the sunshine that 

flashes on steel ! 



"Go 



thy 



back, haughty Southron! 
treasures of gold 

Are dim witii the blood of the hearts 
thou hast sold; 

Thy home may be lovely, but round it 
I hear 

The crack of the whip and the foot- 
steps of fear ! 

"And the sky of thy South may be 
l)righter than ours. 

And greener thy landscapes, and 
fairer thy flowers; 

But dearer the blast round our moun- 
tains which raves, 

Than the sweet summer zephyr which 
breathes over slaves ! 40 

" Full low at thy bidding thy negroes 

may kneel. 
With the iron of bondage on spirit and 

heel; 
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner 

would be 
In fetters with them, than in freedom 

with thee!" 



THE HUNTERS OF MEN 

Have ye heard of our hunting, o'er 

mountain and glen, 
Through cane-brake and forest, — the 

hunting of men ? 
The lords of our land to this hunting 

have gone. 
As the fox-hunter follows the sound of 

the horn; 
Hark ! the cheer and the hallo ! the 

crack of the whip, 
And the yell of the hound as he fastens 

his grip ! 
All blithe are our hunters, and noble' 

their match, 
Though hundreds are caught, there 

are millions to catch. 
So speed to their hunting, o'er moun- 
tain and glen, 
Through cane-brake and forest, — the 

hunting of men ! 10 

Gay luck to our hunters ! how nobly 

they ride 
In the glow of their zeal, and the 

strength of their pride ! 
The priest with his cassock flung back 

on the wind, 
Just screening the politic statesman 

behind; 
The saint and the sinner, with cursing 

and prayer, 
The dnmk and the sober, ride merrily 

there. 
And woman, kind Avoman, wife, 

widow, and maid, 
For the good of the hunted, is lending 

her aid: 
Her foot's in the stirrup, her hand on 

the rein, 
How blithely she rides to the hunting 

of men ! 20 

Oh, goodly and grand is our hunting 

to see, 
In this "land of tlie brave and this 

home of the free." 
Priest, warrior, and statesman, from 

Georgia to Maine, 
All mounting the saddle, all grasping 

the rein; 
Right merrily hunting the black man, 

wliose sin 
Is the curl of his hair and the hue of 

his skin ! 



THE HUNTERS OF MEN 




" Woe, now, to the hunted who turns liini at bay ! " 



Woe, now, to the hunted who turns 

him at bay ! 
Will our hunters be turned from tlieir 

purpose and prey ? 
Will their hearts fail within them? 

their nerves tremble, when 
All roughly they ride to the hunting of 

men ? 30 



Ho! alms for our lumtors! all weary 

and faint, 
Wax the curse of the sinner and 

prayer of the saint. 
The horn is wound faintly, the echoes 

are still, 
Over cane-brake and river, and forest 

and hill. 



338 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Haste, alms for our hiinters! the 
hunted once more 

Have turned from their flight with 
their backs to the shore: 

What right have they here in the 
liome of the white, 

Shadowed o'er by our banner of Free- 
dom and Right? 

Ho! ahns for the hunters! or never 
again 

Will they ride in their pomp to the 
hunting of men ! 40 

Alms, alms for our hunters ! why will 

ye delay, 
When their pride and their glory are 

melting away ? 
The parson has turned; for, on charge 

of his own, 
Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, 

alone ? 
The politic statesman looks back with 

a sigh. 
There is doubt in his heart, there is 

fear in his eye. 
Oh, haste, lest that doubting and fear 

shall prevail. 
And the head of his steed take the 

place of the tail. 
Oh, haste, ere he leave us! for who 

will ride then, 
For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of 

men ? 50 

1835 



STANZAS FOR THE TIMES 

Is this the land our fathers loved, 
The freedom which they toiled to 
win? 
Is this the soil whereon they moved ? 
Are these the graves they slumber 
in? 
Are we the sons by whom are borne 
The mantles which the dead have 
worn ? 

And shall we crouch above these 
graves. 
With craven soul and fettered lip? 
Yoke in with marked and branded 
slaves, 
And tremble at the driver's whip ? 10 
Bend to the eartli our pliant knees, 
And speak but as our masters please? 



Shall outraged Nature cease to feel? 

Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow? 
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel, 
The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's 
blow, 
Turn back the spirit roused to save 
The Truth, our Country, and the 
slave? 

Of human skulls that shrine was 

made, 19 

Round which the priests of Mexico 

Before their loathsome idol prayed; 

Is Freedom's altar fashioned so ? 

And must we yield to Freedom's 

God, 
As offering meet, the negro's blood? 

Shall tongue be mute, when deeds are 

wrought 
Which well might shame extremest 

hell? 
Shall freemen lock the indignant 

thought ? 
Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell ? 
Shall Honor bleed? — shall Truth 

succumb ? 
Shall pen, and press, and soul be 

dumb ? 30 

No; by each spot of haunted ground. 
Where Freedom weeps her chil- 
dren's fall; 

By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's 
mound; 
By Griswold's stained and shat- 
tered wall; 

By Warren's ghost, by Langdon's 
shade; 

By all the memories of our dead ! 

By their enlarging souls, which burst 
The bands and fetters round them 
set; 

By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed 
Within our inmost bosoms, yet, 40 

By all above, around, below. 

Be ours the indignant answer, — No ! 

No; guided by our country's laws. 
For truth, and right, and suffering 
man. 

Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause. 
As Christians may, as freemen can ! 

Still pouring on unwilling ears 

That truth oppression only fears. 



CLERICAL OPPRESSORS 



339 



What! shall we guard our neighbor 
still, 
While woman shrieks beneath his 
rod, 50 

And while he tramples down at will 

The image of a common God ? 
Shall watch and ward be round him 

set. 
Of Northern nerve and bayonet ? 

And shall we know and share with him 

The danger and the growing 

shame ? 

And see our Freedom's light grow dim, 

Which should have filled the world 

with flame? 

And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn, 

A world's reproach around us burn ? 60 

Is't not enough that this is borne? 
And asks our haughty neighbor 

more? 
Must fetters which his slaves have 

worn 
Clank round the Yankee farmer's 

door? 
Must he be told, beside his plough. 
What he must speak, and when, and 

how? 

Must he be told his freedom stands 

On Slavery's dark foundations 

strong; 

On breaking hearts and fettered 

hands, 69 

On robbery, and crime, and wrong ? 

That all his fathers taught is vain, — 

That Freedom's emblem is the chain ? 

Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn ! 
False, foul, profane ! Go, teach as 
well 
Of holy Truth from Falsehood born ! 
Of Heaven refreshed by airs from 
Hell! 
Of Virtue in the arms of Vice ! 
Of Demons planting Paradise ! 

Rail on, then, brethren of the South, 
Ye shall not hear the truth the 
less; ^° 

No seal is on the Yankee's mouth, 
No fetter on the Yankee's press ! 

From our Green Mountains to the sea, 

One voice shall thunder, We are free I 
1835 



CLERICAL OPPRESSORS 

Just God ! and these are tliey 
Who minister at thine altar, God of 

Right! 
Men who their hands with prayer and 
blessing lay 
On Israel's Ark of light ! 

What! preach, and kidnap men? 
Give thanks, and rob thy own af- 
flicted poor? 
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then 

Bolt hard the captive's door? 

What ! servants of thy own 
Merciful Son, who came to seek and 
save 10 

The homeless and the outciist, fetter- 
ing down 
The tasked and plundered slave 1 

Pilate and Herod, friends ! 
Chief priests and rulers, as of old, com- 
bine! 
Just God and iioly ! is that church, 
which lends 
Strength to the spoiler, thine ? 

Paid hypocrites, who turn 
Judgment aside, and rob the Holy 

Book 
Of those liigh words of truth which 
search and burn 
In warning and rel)uke; 30 

Feed fat, ye locusts, feed ! 
And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank 

the Lord 
That, from the toiling bondman's 
utter need, 
Ye pile your own full board. 

How long, O Lord ! how long 
Shall such a priesthood barter truth 

away. 
And in Thy name, for robbery and 
wrong 
At Thy own altars pray ? 

Is not Thy hand stretched forth 
Visibly in the heavens, to awe and 
'smite? ^° 

Shall not the living God of all tlie 
earth, 
And heaven above, do right ? 



340 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Woe, then, to all who ^rind 
Their brethren of a common P'ather 

down ! 
To all who plunder from the immortal 
mind 
Its l)right and glorious crown ! 

Woe to the priesthood ! woe 
To those whose hire is with the price 

of l)lood; 
Perverting, darkening, changing, as 
they go. 
The searching truths of God ! 40 

Their glory and their might 
Shall perish; and their very names 

shall i)e 
Vile before all the people, in the light 

Of a world's liberty. 

Oh, speed the moment on 
When W rong shall cease, and Liberty 

and Love 
And Truth and Right throughout the 
earth be known 
As in their home above. 



A SUMMONS 

Written on the adoption of Pinckney's 
Resolutions in tlie House of Representa- 
tives, and the ])assage of Callioun's "Bill 
for exclufliuf^ Papers written or printed, 
touchinfjf the subject of Slavery, from the 
U. S. Post-ofUce," in the Senate of the 
United States. 

Men of the North-land ! where 's the 
manly spirit 
Of the true-hearted and the un- 
shackled gone? 
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit 
Their names alone ? 

Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched 
within us, 
Stoops the strong manhood of our 
souls so low. 
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile 
can win us 

To silence now ? 

Now, when our land to ruin's brink is 
verging. 
In God's name, let us speak while 
there is time ! 10 



Now, when the padlocks for our lips 
are forging, 

Silence is crime ! 

What ! shall we henceforth humbly ask 
as favors 
Rights all our own? In madness 
shall we barter. 
For treacherous peace, the freedom 
Nature gave us, 

God and our charter ? 

Here shall the statesman forge his 
human fetters, 
Here the false jurist human rights 
deny. 
And in the church, their proud and 
skilled abettors 

Make truth a lie ? 20 

Torture the pages of the hallowed 
Bible, 
To sanction crime, and robbery, and 
blood? 
And, in Oppression's hateful service, 
libel 

Both man and God ? 

Shall our New England stand erect no 
longer. 
But stoop in chains upon her down- 
ward way. 
Thicker to gather on her limbs and 
stronger 

Day after day ? 

Oh no; methinks from all her wild, 

green mountains; 

From valleys where her slumbering 

fathers lie; 30 

From her blue rivers and her welling 

fountains. 

And clear, cold sky; 

From her rough coast, and isles, 
which hungry Ocean 
Gnaws with his surges; from the 
fisher's skiff, 
With white sail swaying to the bil- 
low's motion 

Round rock and cliff; 

From the free fireside of her unbought 
farmer; 
From her free laborer at his loom 
and wheel; 



TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS SHIPLEY 



341 



I 



From the brown smith-shop, where, 
beneath the hammer, 

Rings the red steel; 40 

From each and all, if God hath not 
forsaken 
Our land, and left us to an evil 
choice. 
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall 
waken 

A People's voice. 

Startling and stern! the Northern 
winds shall bear it 
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's 
wave; 
And buried Freedom shall awake to 
hear it 

Within her grave. 

Oh, let that voice go forth ! The bond- 
man sighing 
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's 
cane, 50 

Shall feel the hope, within his bosom 
dying, 

Revive again. 

Let it go forth ! The millions who are 
gazing 
Sadly upon us from afar shall 
smile, 
And unto God devout thanksgiving 
raising. 

Bless us the while. 

Oh for your ancient freedom, pure and 
holy. 
For the deliverance of a groaning 
earth. 
For the wronged captive, bleeding, 
crushed, and lowly, 

Let it go forth ! 60 

Sons of the best of fathers! will ye 
falter 
With all they left ye perilled and at 
stake ? 
Ho! once again on Freedom's holy 
altar 

The fire awake ! 

Prayer-strengthened for the trial, 
come together. 
Put on the harness for the moral 
fight, 



And, with the blessing of your Hea- 
venly Father, 

Maintain the right ! 



TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS 
SHIPLEY 

Gone to thy Heavenly Father's rest ! 

The flowers of Eden round thee 
blowing. 
And on thine ear the murmurs blest 

Of Siloa's waters softly flowing ! 
Beneath that Tree of Life which gives 
To all the earth its healing leaves 
In the white robe of angels clad, 

And wandering l)y that sacred river. 
Whose streams of holiness make glad 

The city of our God forever ! 10 

Gentlest of spirits ! not for thee 
Our tears are shed, our sighs are 
given; 
Why mourn to know thou art a free 

Partaker of the joys of heaven ? 
Finished thy work, and kept thy faith 
In Christian firmness unto death; 
And beautiful as sky and earth, 
When autumn's sun is downward 
going, 
The blessed memory of thy worth 
Around thy place of slumber glow- 
ing ! 20 

But woe for us I who linger still 

With feebler strength and hearts 
less lowly. 
And minds less steadfast to the will 

Of Him wliose every work is holy. 
For not like thine, is crucified 
The spirit of our human pride: 
And at the bondsman's tale of woe. 

And for the outcjist and forsaken, 
Not warm like thine, but cold and 
slow. 

Our weaker sympathies awaken. 30 

Darkly upon our struggling way 
The storm of human hate is sweep- 

Hunted and branded, ami a prey, 
Our watch amidst the darkness 

keeping. 
Oh, for that hidden strength which 

can 
Nerve unto death the inner man ! 



342 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Oil, ft)r thy spirit, tried and true, 
And constant in the hour of trial, 

Prepared to suffer, or to do. 

In meekness aiid in self-denial. 40 

Oh. for that spirit, meek and mild, 
Derided, spurned, yet uncomplain- 
ing; 
By man deserted and reviled, 

'Yet faithful to its trust remaining. 
Still prompt and resolute to save 
From scourge and chain the hunted 

slave; 
Unwavering in the Truth's defence, 
Even where the fires of Hate were 
burning. 
The un<juailing eye of innocence 49 
Alone upon the oppressor turning ! 

O loved of thousands ! to thy grave, 
Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren 
bore thee. 
The poor man and the rescued slave 
Wept as the broken earth closed 
o'er thee; 
And grateful tears, like summer rain, 
Quickened its dying grass again ! 
And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine. 
Shall come the outcast and the 
lowly, 
Of gentle deeds and words of thine so 
Recalling memories sweet and holy ! 

Oh, for the death the righteous die ! 

An end, like autumn's day declin- 
iiif 
On human hearts, as on the sky, 

With holier, tenderer beauty shin- 
ing; 
As to the parting soul were given 
The radiance of an opening heaven ! 
As if that pure and blessed light. 

From off the Eternal altar flowing. 
Were bathing, in its upward flight. 

The spirit to its worship going ! 70 



THE MORAL WARFARE 

When Freedom, on her natal day. 
Within her war-rocked cradle lay. 
An iron race around her stood. 
Baptized her infant brow in blood; 
And, through the storm which round 

her swept, 
Theirconstant ward and watchingkept. 



Then, where our quiet herds repose, 
The roar of baleful battle rose. 
And brethren of a common tongue 
To mortal strife as tigers sprung. 
And every gift on Freedom's shrine 
^^'as man for beast, and blood for 
wine ! 

Our fathers to their graves have gone; 
Their strife is past, their triumph won; 
But sterner trials wait the race 
Which rises in their honored place; 
A moral warfare with the crime 
And folly of an evil time. 

So let it be. In God's own might 
We gird us for the coming fight. 
And, strong in Him whose cause is 

ours 
In conflict wdth unholy powers, 
We grasp the weapons He has given, — 
The Light, and Truth, and Love of 

Heaven. 



RITNER 

WRITTEN ON READING THE MESSAGE 
OF GOVERNOR RITNER, OF PENNSYL- 
VANIA, 1836 

Thank God for the token ! one lip is 
still free, 

One spirit untrammelled, unbending 
one knee ! 

Like the oak of the mountain, deep- 
rooted and firm, 

Erect, when the multitude bends to 
the storm; 

When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, 
and God, 

Are bowed at an Idol polluted with 
blood; 

When the recreant North has forgot- 
ten her trust. 

And the lip of her honor is low in the 
dust, — 

Thank God, that one arm from the 
shackle has broken ! 

Thank God, that one man as a free- 
man has spoken ! 10 

O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has 

been blown ! 
Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the 

murmur has gone ! 



RITNER 



343 



To the land of the South, of the char- 
ter and chain, 

Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's 
pain; 

Where the cant of Democracy dwells 
on the lips 

Of the forgers of fetters, and wielders 
of whips ! 

Where " chivalric " honor means really 
no more 

Than scourging of women, and rob- 
bing the poor ! 

Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth 
on high, 

And the words which he utters, are — 
Worship, or die ! 20 

Right onward, oh, speed it ! Wherever 

the blood 
Of the wronged and the guiltless is 

crying to God; 
Wherever a slave in his fetters is pining ; 
Wherever the lash of the driver is 

twining; 
Wherever from kindred, torn rudely 

apart, 
Comes the sorrowful wail of the 

broken of heart; 
Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind, 
In silence and darkness, the God- 
given mind; 
There, God speed it onward ! its truth 

will be felt. 
The bonds shall be loosened, the iron 

shall melt ! 30 

And oh, will the land where the free 
soul of Penn 

Still lingers and breathes over moun- 
tain and glen; 

Will the land where a Benezet's spirit 
went forth 

To the peeled and the meted, and out- 
cast of Earth; 

Where the words of the Charter of 
Liberty first 

From the soul of the sage and the 
patriot burst; 

Where first for the wronged and the 
weak of their kind. 

The Christian and statesman their 
efforts combined; 

Will that land of the free and the good 
wear a chain ? 

Will the call to the rescue of Freedom 
be vain ? 40 



No, Ritner! her "Friends" at thy 
warning shall stand 

Erect for the truth, like their ances- 
tral band; 

Forgetting the feuds and the strife of 
past time, 

Counting coldness injustice, and si- 
lence a crime; 

Turning back from the cavil of creeds, 
to unite 

Once again for tlie poor in defence of 
the Right; 

Breasting calmly, l)ut firmly, the full 
tide of Wrong, 

Overwhelmed, l)ut not borne on its 
surges along; 

Unappalled by the danger, the shame, 
and the pain, 

And counting each trial for Truth as 



their gain 



so 



And 



yeomanry. 



that bold-hearted 

honest and true, 
Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its 

due; 
Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert 

with thine. 
On the banks of Swetara, the songs of 

the Rhine, — 
The German-born pilgrims, who first 

dared to brave 
The scorn of the proud in the cause of 

the slave; 
Will the sons of such men yield the 

lords of the South 
One brow for the brand, for the pad- 
lock one mouth ? 
Thgy cater to tyrants ? They rivet the 

chain. 
Which their fathers smote off, on the 

negro again ? ^o 

No, never! one voice, like the sound 

in the cloud, 
When the roar of the storm waxes 

loud and more loud, 
Wherever the foot of the freeman hath 

pressed 
From the Delaware's marge to the 

Lake of tiie West, 
On the South-going breezes shall 

deepen and grow 
Till the land it sweeps over shall trem- 
ble below ! 
The voice of a people, uprisen, 

awake. 



344 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Pennsylvania's watchword, witli Free- 
dom at stake, 

Thrillinj^ up from each valley, flung 
down from each height, 

" Our Countrv and Liberty ! God for 
the Right!" 70 



THE PASTORAL LETTER 

So, this is all, — the utmost reach 
Of priestly power the mind to fet- 
ter! 
When laymen think, when women 
preach, 
A war of words, a "Pastoral Let- 
ter!" 
Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes ! 
Was it thus with those, your pre- 
decessors, 
Who sealed with racks, and fire, and 
ropes 
Their loving-kindness to transgres- 
sors? 

A "Pastoral Letter," grave and dull; 
Alas! in hoof and horns and fea- 
tures, 10 
How different is your Brookfield 
bull 
From him who bellows from St. 
Peter's ! 
Your pastoral rights and powers from 
harm. 
Think ye, can words alone preserve 
them ? 
Your wiser fathers taught the arm 
And sword of temporal power to 
serve them. 

Oh, glorious days, when Church and 
State 
Were wedded by your spiritual 
fathers ! 
And on submissive shoulders sat 
Your Wilsons and your Cotton 
Mathers. 20 

No vile " itinerant" then could mar 
The beauty of your tranquil Zion, 
But at his peril of the scar 

Of hangman's whip and branding- 
iron. 

Then, wholesome laws relieved the 
Church 
Of heretic and mischief-maker, 



And priest and bailiff joined in search, 
By turns, of Papist, witch, and 
Quaker ! 
The stocks were at each church's door, 
The gallows stood on Boston Com- 
mon, 30 
A Papist's ears the pillory bore, — 
The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman ! 

Your fathers dealt not as ye deal 
With " non - prof essing " frantic 
teachers; 
They bored the tongue with red-hot 
steel, 
And flayed the backs of "female 
preachers." 
Old Hampton, had her fields a tongue, 
And Salem's streets could tell their 
story, 
Of fainting woman dragged along, 
Gashed by the whip accursed and 



gory 



40 



And will ye ask me, why this taunt 

Of memories sacred from the 
scorner ? 
And why with reckless hand I plant 

A nettle on the graves ye honor ? 
Not to reproach New England's dead 

This record from the past I sum- 
mon, 
Of manhood to the scaffold led. 

And suffering and heroic woman. 

No, for yourselves alone, I turn 

The pages of intolerance over, 50 
That, in their spirit, dark and stern, 

Ye haply may your own discover ! 
For, if ye claim the "pastoral right" 

To silence Freedom's voice of warn- 
ing, 
And from your precincts shut the light 

Of Freedom's day around ye dawn- 
ing; 

If when an earthquake voice of power 
And signs in earth and heaven are 
showing 
That forth, in its appointed hour, 

The Spirit of the Lord is going ! 60 

And, with that Spirit, Freedom's light 

On kindred, tongue, and people 

breaking, 

Whose slumbering millions, at the 

sight. 

In glory and in strength are waking ! 



HYMN 



345 



When for the sighing of the poor, 

And for the needy, God hath risen, 
And chains are breaking, and a door 

Is opening for the souls in prison ! 
If then ye would, with puny hands. 

Arrest the very work of Heaven, 70 
And bind anew the evil bands 

Which God's right arm of power 
hath riven; 

What marvel that, in many a mind. 
Those darker deeds of bigot mad- 
. ness 
Are closely with your own combined, 
Yet "less in anger than in sad- 
ness"? 
What marvel, if the people learn 

To claim the right of free opinion ? 
What marvel, if at times they spurn 
Tne ancient yoke of your domin- 
ion ? 80 

A glorious remnant linger yet. 

Whose lips are wet at Freedom's 
fountains. 
The coming of whose welcome feet 

Is beautiful upon our mountains ! 
Men, who the gospel tidings bring 

Of Liberty and Love forever, 
Whose joy is an abiding spring. 

Whose peace is as a gentle river ! 

But ye, who scorn the thrilling tale 
Of Carolina's high-souled daugh- 
ters, 90 
Which echoes here the mournful wail 

Of sorrow from Edisto's waters. 
Close while ye may the public ear. 
With malice vex, with slander 
wound them. 
The pure and good shall throng to 
hear. 
And tried and manly hearts sur- 
round them. 

Oh, ever may the power which led 

Their way to such a fiery trial. 
And strengthened womanhood to tread 
The wine-press of such self-denial. 
Be round them in an evil land, 10 1 
With wisdom and with strength 
from Heaven, 
With Miriam's voice, and Judith's 
hand, 
And Deborah's song, for triumph 
given 1 



And what are ye who strive witli God 

Agamst the ark of His salvation 
Moved by the breath of prayer 
abroad. 
With blessings for a dying nation ? 
What, but the stubble and the hay 
To perish, even as flax consum- 
ing, 
With all that bars His glorious way, 
Before the brightness of His com- 
ing? 

And thou, sad Angel, who so long 

Hast waited for the glorious token. 
That Earth from all her bonds of 
wrong 
To liberty and light has broken, — 
Angel of Freedom ! soon to thee 
The sounding trumpet shall be 
given. 
And over Earth's full jubilee 

Shall deeper joy be felt in Hea- 
ven! 120 
1837 

HYMN 

WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF 
THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF BRIT- 
ISH EMANCIPATION, AT THE BROAD- 
WAY TABERNACLE, NEW YORK, FIltST 
OF AUGUST, 1837. 

O Holy Father! just and true 
Are all Thy works and words and 
ways, 
And unto Thee alone are duo 

Thanksgiving and eternal praise ! 
As children of Thy gracious care, 
We veil the eye, we bend the 
knee. 
With broken words of praise and 
prayer. 
Father and God, we come to Thee. 

For Thou hast heard, O God of Right, 

The sigliing of the island slave; 
And stretched for iiim the arm of 
miglit, 
Not shortened that it could not 
save. 
The laborer sits beneath his vine. 
The shackled soul and hand are 
free ; 
Thanksgiving ! for the work is Tlimo ! 
Praise ! for the blessing is of Thee ! 



346 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And oh, we feel Thy presence here, 

Tliy awful arm in judgment bare! 
Thine eye hath seen the bondman's 
tear; 
Thine ear hath heard the bond- 
man's prayer. 
Praise ! for the pride of man is low, 

The counsels of the wise are naught, 
The fountains of repentance flow; 
What hath our God in mercy 
wrought ? 

Speed on Thy work, Lord God of 
Hosts ! 
And when the bondman's chain is 
riven, 
And swells from all our guilty coasts 
The anthem of the free to Heaven, 
Oh, not to those whom Thou hast 
led, 
As with Thy cloud and fire before. 
But unto Thee, in fear and dread. 
Be praise and glory evermore. 



THE FAREWELL 

OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER 
DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN 
BONDAGE 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, 
Where the noisome insect stings, 
Wliere the fever demon strews 
Poison with tiie falling dews. 
Where the sickly sunbeams glare 
Through the hoib and misty air; 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 9 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
There no mother's eye is near them. 
There no motiier's ear can hear them; 
Never, when the torturing lash 
Seams their back with many a gash. 
Shall a mother's kindness bless them. 
Or a mother's arms caress tiiem. 20 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To tlie rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters 1 



Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
Oh, when weary, sad, and slow. 
From the fields at night they go. 
Faint with toil, and racked with 

pain, 
To their cheerless homes again, 30 
There no brother's voice shall greet 

them 
There no father's welcome meet 
them. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
From the tree whose shadow lay 
On their childhood's place of play; 40 
From the cool spring where they 

drank ; 
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank; 
From the solemn house of prayer, 
And the holy counsels there; 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters 1 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone; 
Toiling through the weary day, si 
And at night the spoiler's prey. 
Oh, that they had earlier died, 
Sleeping calmly, side by side. 
Where the tyrant's power is o'er. 
And the fetter galls no more ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone. 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 61 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
By the holy love He beareth; 
By the bruised reed He spareth; 
Oh, may He, to whom alone 
All their cruel wTongs are known, 
Still their hope and refuge prove, 
With a more than mother's love. 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 69 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daugh- 
ters I 



PENNSYLVANIA HALL 



347 



PENNSYLVANIA HALL 

Not with the splendors of the days of 

old, 
The spoil of nations, and barbaric gold ; 
No weapons wrested from the fields of 

blood, 
Where dark and stern the unyielding 

Roman stood, 
And the proud eagles of his cohorts saw 
A world, war-wasted, crouching to his 

law; 
Nor blazoned car, nor banners floating 

gay, 
Like those which swept along the Ap- 

pian Way, 
When, to the welcome of imperial 

Rome, 
The victor warrior came in triumph 

home, lo 

And trumpet peal, and shoutings wild 

and high. 
Stirred the blue quiet of the Italian 

sky; 
But calm and grateful, prayerful and 

sincere. 
As Christian freemen only, gathering 

here, 
We dedicate our fair and lofty Hall, 
Pillar and arch, entablature and wall. 
As Virtue's shrine, as Liberty's abode, 
Sacred to Freedom, and to Freedom's 

God ! 
Far statelier Halls, 'neath brighter 

skies than these. 
Stood darkly mirrored in the ^Egean ' 

seas, 20 

Pillar and shrine, and life-like statues 

seen, 
Graceful and pure, the marble shafts 

between; 
Where glorious Athens from her rocky 

hill 
Saw Art and Beauty subject to her will ; 
And the chaste temple, and the classic 

grove. 
The hall of sages, and the bowers of 

love, 
Arch, fane, and column, graced the 

shores, and gave 
Their shadows to the blue Saronic 

wave; 
And statelier rose on Tiber's winding 

side. 
The Pantheon's dome, the Coliseum's 

pride, ^° \ 



The Capitol, whose arches backward 

flung 
Tlie deep, clear cadence of the Ro- 
man tongue, 
Whence stern decrees, like words of 

fate, went forth 
To the awed nations of a conquered 

earth. 
Where the proud Cirsars in tlieir glory 

came, 
And Brutus lightened from his lips of 

flame ! 
Yet in the porches of Athena's halls. 
And in tlie shadow of her stately 

walls. 
Lurked the sad bondman, and his tears 

of woe 
Wet the cold marble with unheeded 

flow; 40 

And fetters clanked beneath the silver 

dome 
Of the proud Pantheon of imperious 

Rome. 
Oh, not for him, the chained and 

stricken slave. 
By Tiber's shore, or blue ^gina's 

wave. 
In the thronged forum, or the sages' 

seat, 
The bold lip pleaded, and the warm 

heart beat; 
No soul of sorrow melted at his pain. 
No tear of pity rusted on his chain ! 

But this fair Hall to Truth and Free- 
dom given, 
Fledged to the Right before all Earth 

and Heaven, 5° 

A free arena for the strife of mind, 
To caste, or sect, or color unconfined, 
Shall tlirill with echoes such a.s ne'er 

of old 
From Roman hall or Grecian teniph^ 

rolled; 
Thoughts shall find utterance such as 

never yet 
The Propylea or the Forum met. 
Beneath its roof no gladiator's strife 
Shall win applauses with the waste of 

Hfe; 
No lordly lictor urge the barbarous 

game. 
No wanton Lais glory in her shame. 60 
But here the tear of sympathy shall 

flow. 
As the ear listens to the tale of woe; 



348 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Here in stern judgment of the oppres- 
sor's wroiifi; 

Shall strong rehukings thrill on Free- 
dom's tongue, 

No partial justice hold th' unequal 
scale, 

No pride of Ciiate a brother's rights 
assail. 

No tyrant's mandates echo from this 
wall. 

Holy to Freedom and the Rights of 
All! 

But a fair field, where mind may close 
with mind, 

Free as the sunshine and the chainless 
wind; 70 

Where the high trust is fixed on Truth 
alone. 

And bonds and fetters from the soul 
are thrown; 

Where wealth, and rank, and worldly 
pomp, and might, 

Yield to the presence of the True and 
Right. 

And fitting is it that this Hall should 
stand 

Where Pennsylvania's Founder led 
his band. 

From thy blue waters, Delaware ! — 
to press 

The virgin verdure of the wilderness. 

Here, where all Europe with amaze- 
ment saw 

The soul's high freedom trammelled 
by no law; 80 

Here, where the fierce and warlike for- 
est-men 

Gathered, in peace, around the home 
of Penn, 

Awed by the weapons Love alone had 
given 

Drawn from the holy armory of Hea- 
ven; 

Where Nature's voice against the 
bondman's wrong 

First found an earnest and indignant 
tongue; 

Where Lay's bold message to the 
proud was borne; 

And Keitii's rebuke, and Franklin's 
manly scorn ! 

Fitting it is that here, where Free- 
dom first 

From hor fair feet shook off the Old 
World's dust, 50 



Spread her white pinions to our West- 
ern blast. 

And her free tresses to our sunshine 
cast, 

One Hall should rise redeemed from 
Slavery's ban, 

One Temple sacred to the Rights of 
Man! 

Oh ! if the spirits of the parted come, 
Visiting angels, to their olden home; 
If the dead fathers of the land look 

forth 
From their fair dwellings, to the things 

of eartli, 
Is it a dream, that with their eyes of 

love, 
They gaze now on us from the bowers 

above? 100 

Lay's ardent soul, and Benezet the 

mild. 
Steadfast in faith, yet gentle as a child, 
Meek-hearted Woolman, and that 

brother-band. 
The sorrowing exiles from their " Fa- 
therland," 
Leaving their homes in Krieshiem's 

bowers of vine. 
And the blue beauty of their glorious 

Rhine, 
To seek amidst our solemn depths of 

wood 
Freedom from man, and holy peace 

with God; 
Who first of all their testimonial gave 
Against the oppressor, for the outcast 

slave, no 

Is it a dream that such as these look 

down, 
And with their blessing our rejoicings 

crown ? 
Let us rejoice, that while the pulpit's 

door 
Is barred against the pleaders for the 

poor; 
While the Church, wrangling upon 

points of faith. 
Forgets her bondmen suffering unto 

death; 
While crafty Traffic and the lust of 

Gain 
Unite to forge Oppression's triple 

chain. 
One door is open, and one Temple free. 
As a resting-place for hunted Lib- 
erty I lao 



PENNSYLVANIA HALL 



349 




The Pantheon 



Where men may speak, unshackled 
and unawed, 

High words of Truth, for Freedom and 
for God. 

And when that truth its perfect work 
hath done. 

And rich with blessings o'er our land 
hath gone; 

When not a slave beneath his yoke 
shall pine. 

From broad Potomac to the far Sa- 
bine: 

When unto angel lips at last is given 

The silver trump of Jubilee in Hea- 
ven; 

And from Virginia's plains, Ken- 
tucky's shades, 

And through the dim Floridian ever- 
glades, 130 



Rises, to meet that angel -trumpet's 

sound. 
The voice of millions from their chains 

unbound; 
Then, though tiiis Hall be cruinhling 

in decay, 
Its strong walls blending with the 

common clay, 
Yet round tlie ruins of its strongtli 

shall stand 
The best and noblest of a ransomed 

land — 
Pilgrims, like these who throng around 

the shrine 
Of Mecca, or of holy Palestine ! 
A prouder glory shall tiiat ruin 

own 
Than that which lingers round the 

Partlienon. »•»" 



35° 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Here sluill the child of after years be 
taught 

Tlie works of Freedom wliicli his fa- 
thers wroiigiit; 

ToUl of tiie trials of the present hour, 

Our weary strife witli prejudice and 
power; 

How the high errand ([uickened wo- 
man's soul, 

And touched her lip as with a living 
coal; 

How Freedom's martvrs kept their 
lofty faith 

True and unwavering, unto bonds and 
death ; 

The pencil's art shall sketch the 
ruined Hall, 

The Muses' garland crown its aged 
wall, ISO 

And History's pen for after times re- 
cord 

Its consecration unto Freedom's God ! 



THE NEW YEAR 

ADDRESSED TO THE PATRONS OF THE 
PENNSYLVANIA FREEMAN 

The wave is l)reaking on the shore. 
The echo fading from the chime; 

Again the shadow moveth o'er 
The dial-plate of time 1 

O seer-seen Angel ! waiting now 
With weary feet on sea and shore, 

Impatient for the last dread vow 
That time shall be no more ! 

Once more across thy sleepless eye 
The semblance of a smile has 
passed: lo 

The year departing leaves more nigh 
Time's fearfullest and last. 

Oh, in that dying year hath been 
The sum of all since time began; 

The birth and death, the joy and pain, 
Of Nature and of Man. 

Spring, with her change of sun and 

shower. 

And streams released from Winter's 

chain, 

And Imrsting bud, and opening flower, 

And greenly growing grain; 20 



And Summer's shade, and sunshine 
warm, 
And rainbows o'er her hill-tops 
bowed, 
And voices in her rising storm; 
God speaking from His cloud ! 

And Autumn's fruits and clustering 
sheaves. 

And soft, warm days of golden light, 
The glory of her forest leaves. 

And harvest-moon at night; 

And Winter with her leafless grove, 
And prisoned stream, and drifting 
snow, 30 

The brilliance of her heaven above 
And of her earth below: 

And man, in whom an angel's mind 
With earth's low instincts finds 
abode. 

The highest of the links which bind 
Brute nature to her God; 

His infant eye hath seen the light. 
His childhood's merriest laughter 
rung. 
And active sports to manlier might 
• The nerves of boyhood strung ! 40 

And quiet love, and passion's fires. 
Have soothed or burned in man- 
hood's breast, 

And lofty aims and low desires 
By turns disturbed his rest. 

The wailing of the newly-born 

Has mingled with the funeral knell; 

And o'er the dying's ear has gone 
The merry marriage-bell. 

And Wealth has filled his halls with 
mirth, 
While Want, in many a humble 
shed, 50 

Toiled, shivering by her cheerless 
hearth. 
The live-long night for bread. 

And worse than all, the human slave, 
The sport of lust, and pride, and 
scorn ! 
Plucked off the crown his Maker 
gave, 
His regal manhood gone ! 



THE NEW YEAR 



351 



Oh, still, my country ! o'er thy plains, 
Blackened with slavery's blight and 
ban, 

That human chattel drags his chains, 
An uncreated man ! 60 

And still, where'er to sun and breeze, 
My country, is thy flag unrolled. 

With scorn, the gazing stranger sees 
A stain on every fold. 

Oh, tear the gorgeous emblem down ! 

It gathers scorn from every eye. 
And despots smile and good men 
frown 

Whene'er it passes by. 

Shame! shame! its starry splendors 
glow 

Above the slaver's loathsome jail; 70 
Its folds are ruffling even now 

His crimson flag of sale. 

Still round our country's proudest hall 
The trade in human flesh is driven. 

And at each careless hammer-fall 
A human heart is riven. 

And this, too, sanctioned by the men 
Vested with power to shield the right. 

And throw each vile and robber den 
Wide open to the light. 80 

Yet, shame upon them ! there they sit, 
Men of the North, subdued and still; 

Meek, pliant poltroons, only fit 
To work a master's will. 

Sold, bargained off for Southern votes, 
A passive herd of Northern mules, 

Just braying through their purchased 
throats 
Whate'er their owner rules. 

And he, the basest of the base. 

The vilest of the vile, whose name, 90 

Embalmed in infinite disgrace, 
Is deathless in its shame ! 

A tool, to bolt the people's door 
Against the people clarnoring there 

An ass, to trample on their floor 
A people's right of prayer! 

Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast, 
Self-pilloried to the public view, 



A mark for every pas.sing bla.st 

Of scorn to whistle through; 100 

There let him hang, and hear tlie boa.st 
Of Southrons o'er their pliant 
tool, — 

A new Stylites on his post, 
" Sacred to ridicule ! " 

Look we at home! our noblo hall, 
To Freedom's holy purpose giv(>n, 

Now rears its black and ruined wall 
Beneath the wintry heaven. 

Telling the story of its tlooni, 

The fiendish mol), the prostrate 
law, no 

The fiery jet through midnigiit's 
gloom. 
Our gazing thousands saw. 

Look to our State! the poor man's 
right 
Torn from him : and the sons of those 
Whose blood in Freedom's sternest 
fight 
Sprinkled the Jersey snows. 

Outlawed within the land of Penn, 
That Slavery's guilty fears might 
cease. 

And those whom God created men 
Toil on as brutes in peace. 1 20 

Yet o'er the blackness of the storm 
A l)OW of promise bends on high. 

Andgleamsof sunshine, soft and warm. 
Break through our clouded sky. 

East, West, and North, the shout is 
heard, 

Of freemen rising for the right: 
Each valley hath its rallying word, 

Each hill its signal ligiit. 

O'er Massachusetts' rocks of gray 
The strengthening light of freedom 
shines, »3o 

Rhode Island's Xarragansett l^ay, 
And Vermont's snow-hung pines 1 

From Hudson's frowning palisades 
To Allegiiany's laurelled crest, 

O'er lakes and prairies, streams and 
glades. 
It shines upon the West. 



352 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Speed on the li^ht to those who dwell 
In Slavery's land of woe and sin, 

And through the blackness of that 
Hell 
Let Heaven's own light break in. mo 

So shall the Southern conscience quake 
Before that light poured full and 
strong, 

So shall the Southern heart awake 
To all the bondman's wrong. 

Antl from that rich and sunny land 
The song of grateful millions rise, 

Like that of Israel's ransomed band 
Beneath Arabia's skies: 

And all who now are bound beneath 
Our banner's shade, our eagle's 
wing, ISO 

From Slavery's night of moral death 
To light and hfe siiall spring. 

Broken the bondman's chain, and 
gone 
The master's guilt, and hate, and 
fear, 
And unto both alike shall dawn 
A New and Happy Year. 



THE RELIC 

Written on receiving a cane wrougl)! 
from a fragment of the wood-work of Penn- 
sylvania Ilall which the tire had spared. 

Token of friendship true and tried. 
From one whose fiery heart of youth 

With mine has beaten, side by side, 
For Liberty and Truth; 

With honest pride the gift I take. 

And prize it for the giver's sake. 

But not alone because it tells 

Of generous hand and heart sincere; 

Around that gift of friendship dwells 
A memory doubly dear; lo 

Earth's noblest aim, man's holiest 
thought. 

With that memorial frail inwrought! 

Pure thoughts and sweet like flowers 
unfold, 
And precious memories round it 
cling, 



Even as the Prophet's rod of old 

In beauty blossoming: 
And buds of feeling, pure and good. 
Spring from its cold unconscious wood. 

Relic of Freedom's shrine ! a brand 
Plucked from its burning ! let it be 

Dear as a jewel from the hand 21 

Of a lost friend to me ! 

Flower of a perished garland left, 

Of life and beauty unbereft ! 

Oh, if the young enthusiast bears. 
O'er weary waste and sea, the stone 

Which crumbled from the Forum's 
stairs. 
Or round the Parthenon; 

Or olive-bough from some wild tree 

Hung over old Thermopylae: 30 

If leaflets from some hero's tomb. 
Or moss-wreath torn from ruins 
hoary; 
Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom 

On fields renowned in story; 
Or fragment from the Alhambra's 

crest, 
Or the gray rock by Druids blessed; 

Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growing 
Where Freedom led her stalwart 
kern, 
Or Scotia's "rough bur thistle" blow- 
ing 
On Bruce's Bannockburn; 40 

Or Runny mede's wild English rose, 
Or lichen plucked from Sempach's 
snows 1 

If it be true that things like these 
To heart and eye bright visions bring, 

Shall not far holier memories 
To this memorial cling? 

Which needs no mellowing mist of 
time 

To hide the crimson stains of crime ! 

Wreck of a temple, unprofaned; 
Of courts where Peace with Free- 
dom trod, * so 
Lifting on high, with hands unstained. 

Thanksgiving unto God; 
Where Mercy's voice of love was plead- 
ing 
For human hearts in bondage bleed- 
ing! 



THE WORLD'S CONVENTION 



353 



Where, midst the sound of rushing 
feet 
And curses on the night-air flung, 
That pleading voice rose calm and 
sweet 
From woman's earnest tongue; 
And Riot turned his scowling glance, 
Awed, from her tranquil counte- 
nance ! 60 

That temple now in ruin lies ! 

The fire-stain on its shattered wall, 
And open to the changing skies 

Its black and roofless hall. 
It stands before a nation's sight, 
A gravestone over buried Right ! 

But from that ruin, as of old, 

The fire-scorched stones them- 
selves are crying, 
And from their ashes white and cold 
Its timbers are replying ! 7° 

A voice which slavery cannot kill 
Speaks from the crumbling arches 
still ! 

And even this relic from thy shrine, 
O holy Freedom ! hath to me 

A potent power, a voice and sign 
To testify of thee; 

And, grasping it, methinks I feel 

A deeper faith, a stronger zeal. 

And not unlike that mystic rod, 
Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian 
wave, 80 

Which opened, in the strength of God, 
A pathway for the slave. 

It yet may point the bondman's way. 

And turn the spoiler from his prey. 



THE WORLD'S CONVENTION 

OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION, 
HELD IN LONDON IN 1840 

Yes, let them gather ! Summon forth 
The pledged philanthropy of Earth. 
From every land, whose hills have 

heard 
The bugle blast of Freedom waking; 
Or shrieking of her symbol-bird 

From out his cloudy eyrie breaking: 
Where Justice hath one worshipper. 
Or truth one altar built to her; 



Where'er a human eye is weeping 
O'er wrongs which Earth's sad chil- 
dren know; ,o 

Where'er a single heart is keeping 
Its prayerful watch with human 
woe: 

Thence let them come, and greet each 
other, 

And know in each a friend and bro- 
ther ! 

Yes, let them come ! from each green 
vale 

Where England's old baronial halls 

Still bear upon their storied walls 
The grim crusader's rusted mail, 
Battered by Paynim spear and brand 
On Malta's rock or Syria's sand ! 20 
And mouldering pennon-staves once 
set 

Within the soil of Palestine, 
By Jordan and Gennesaret; 

Or, borne with England's battle 
Une, 
O'er Acre's shattered turrets stooping, 
Or, midst the camp their banners 
drooping. 

With dews from hallowed Hermon 
wet, 
A holier summons now is given 
Than that gray hermit's voice of old, 
Which unto all the winds of heaven 30 

The banners of the Cross unrolled ! 
Not for the long-deserted shrine; 

Not for the dull unconscious sod, 
Which tells not by one lingering sign 

That there the hope of Israel trod; 
But for that truth, for which alone 

In pilgrim eyes are sanctified 
The garden moss, the mountain stone, 
Whereon His holv sandals pressed. — 
The fountain which His lip hath 
blessed, — ^o 

Whate'er hath touched His garment's 
hem 

At Bethany or Bethlehem, 

Or Jordan's river-side. 
For Freedom in the name of Him 

Who came to raise Earth's drooping 
poor, 
To break the chain from every limb, 
The bolt from every prison door ! 
For these, o'er all the eart h hath pa.^scd 
An ever-deepening trumjict bhust. 
As if an angel's breath had lent 50 
Its vigor to the instrument. 



354 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And Wales, from Snowdon's mountain 

wall, 
Shall startle at tliat thrilling call, 

As if she lieard her bards again; 
And Erin's " harp on Tara's wall" 

(live out its ancient strain, 
Mirthful and sweet, yet sad withal, — 

The melody which Erin loves. 
When o'er that harp, 'mid bursts of 

gladness 
And slogan cries and lyke-wake sad- 
ness, 60 

The hand of her O'Connell moves! 
Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill, 
And mountain hold, and heathery 
hill, 

Sliall catcli and echo back the note. 
As if she heard upon the air 
Once more her Cameronian's prayer 

And song of Freedom float. 
And cheering echoes shall reply 
From each remote dependency, 
Where Britain's mighty sway is 
known, 70 

In tropic sea or frozen zone; 
Where'er her sunset flag is furling. 
Or morning gun-fire's smoke is curl- 

From Indian Bengal's groves of palm 
And rosy fields and gales of Ixalm, 
Where Eastern pomp and power are 

rolled 
Through regal Ava's gates of gold; 
And from tlie lakes and ancient woods 
And dim Canadian solitudes. 
Whence, sternly from her rocky 

throne, 80 

Queen of the North, Quebec looks 

down ; 
And from those bright and ransomed 

Isles 
Where all unwonted Freedom smiles. 
And the dark laborer still retains 
The scar of slavery's broken chains ! 

From the hoar Alps, which sentinel 
The gateways of the land of Tell, 
Where morning's keen and earliest 

glance 
On Jura's rocky wall is thrown, 
And from the olive bowers of France 
And vine groves garlanding the 

Rhone, — 91 

"Friends of the Blacks," as true and 

tried 
As those who stood by Oge's side, 



And heard the Haytien's tale of wrong, 
Shall gather at tiiat summons strong; 
Broglie, Passy, and he whose song 
Breathed over Syria's holy sod. 
And in the paths which Jesus trod. 
And murmured midst the hills which 

hem 
Crownless and sad Jerusalem, 100 

Hath echoes wheresoe'er the tone 
Of Israel's prophet-lyre is known. 

Still let them come; from Quito's 
walls. 
And from the Orinoco's tide. 
From Lima's Inca-haunted halls. 
From Santa Fe and Yucatan, — 

Men who l)y swart Guerrero's side 
Proclaimed the deathless rights of 
man. 
Broke every bond and fetter off, 
And hailed in every sable serf no 
A free and brother Mexican ! 
Chiefs who across the Andes' chain 
Have followed Freedom's flowing 
pennon. 
And seen on Junin's fearful plain. 
Glare o'er the broken ranks of 
Spain 
The fire-burst of Bolivar's cannon ! 
And Hayti, from her mountain land, 
Shall send the sons of those who 
hurled 
Defiance from her blazing strand, 
The war-gage from her Petion's 
hand, 120 

Alone against a hostile world. 

Nor all unmindful, thou, the while. 
Land of the dark and mystic Nile ! 

Thy Moslem mercy yet may shame 

All tyrants of a Christian name. 
When in the shade of Gizeh's pile, 
Or, where, from Abyssinian hills 
El Gerek's upper fountain fills, 
Or where from Mountains of the Moon 
El Abiad bears his watery boon, 130 
Where'er thy lotus blossoms swim 

Within their ancient hallowed wa- 
ters; 
Where'er is heard the Coptic hymn, 

Or song of Nubia's sable daugh- 
ters; 
The curse of slavery and the crime, 
Thy bequest from remotest time. 
At thy dark Mehemet's decree 
Forevermore shall pass from thee; 



THE WORLD'S CONVENTION 




*' Or Jordan's river-side " 



And chains forsake each captive's 

hmb 139 

Of all those tribes, wliose hills around 

Have echoed back the cymbal sound 

And victor horn of Ibrahim, 

And thou whose glory and whose crime 
To earth's remotest bound and clime, 
In mingled tones of awe and scorn, 
The echoes of a world have borne, 
My country ! glorious at thy birth, 
A day-star flashing brightly forth. 

The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn ! 
Oh, who could dream that saw thee 
then, ISO 

And watched thy rising from afar, 
That vapors from oppression's fen 
Would cloud the upward tending 
star ? 
Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which 
heard. 
Awe-struck, the shout which hailed 
thy dawning, 
Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and 
king, 



To mock thee with their welcoming, 
Like Hades wlien her tlironos wore 

stirred 
To greet the down-cast Star of 

Morning ! 
"Aha! and art tliou fallen thus? jfio 
Art thou become as one of us?" 

Land of my fathers ! there will stand, 
Amidst that world-a-ssoinbled band, 
Those owning tliy maternal claim 
Unweakened by thy crime and shame; 
The sad reprovers of thy wrong; 
The children thou hast spurned so long. 
Still with affection's fondest yearnint; 
To their unnatural mother turning. 
No traitors they! but tried and 
leal, >7o 

Whose own is but thy general weal, 
Still blending with the patriot's zeal 
The Christian's love for human kind, 
To caste and climate unconfmed. 

A holy gathering ! peaceful all : 
No threat of war, no savage call 



356 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



For vengeance on an erring; brother ! 
But in their stead tiio godiiive plan 
To teach tiie l)rotiierhood of man 
To love and reverence one an- 
other, 180 
As sharers of a common blood, 
The children of a common God! 
Yet, even at its lightest word. 
Shall Slavery's darkest depths be 

stirred: 
Spain, watching from her Moro's keep 
Her slave-ships traversing the deep, 
And Rio, in her strength and pride, 
Lifting, along her mountain-side, 
Her snowy battlements and towers, 
Her lemon-groves and tropic bowers, 
With bitter hate and sullen fear 191 
Its freedom-giving voice shall hear; 
And where my country's flag is flow- 
ing, 
On breezes from Mount Vernon blow- 
ing. 
Above the Nation's council halls, 
Where Freedom's praise is loud and 
long. 
While close beneath the outward 
walls 
The driver plies his reeking thong, 

The hammer of the man-thief falls. 
O'er hypocritic cheek and brow 200 
The crimson flush of shame shall glow: 
And all who for their native land 
Are pledging life and heart and hand, 
Worn watchers o'er her changing weal. 
Who for her tarnished honor feel. 
Through cottage door and council-hall 
Siiall thunder an awakening call. 
The pen along its page shall burn 
With all intolerable scorn; 
An eloquent rebuke shall go 210 

On all the winds that Southward 

blow; 
From priestly lips, now sealed and 

dumb, 
Warning and dread appeal shall come. 
Like those which Israel heard from 

him. 
The Prophet of the Cherubim; 
Or tliose which sad Esaias hurled 
Against a sin-accursed world ! 
Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling 
Unceasing from its iron wing, 
With characters inscribed thereon, 220 

As fearful in the despot's hall 
As to the pomp of Babylon 
Tiie fire-sign on the palace wall ! 



And, from her dark iniquities, 
iVIethinks I see my country rise: 
Not challenging the nations round 

To note her tardy justice done; 
Her captives from their chains un- 
bound, 

Her prisons opening to the sun: 
But tearfully her arms extending 230 
Over the poor and unoffending; 

Her regal emblem now no longer 
A bird of prey, with talons reeking. 
Above the dying captive shrieking. 
But, spreading out her ample wing, 
A broad, impartial covering, 

The weaker sheltered by the 
stronger ! 
Oh, then to Faith's anointed eyes 

The promised token shall be given; 
And on a nation's sacrifice, 240 

Atoning for the sin of years, 
And wet with penitential tears, 

The fire shall fall from Heaven ! 



MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA 

Written on reading an account of the pro- 
ceedings of the citizens of Norfolk, Va., in 
reference to George Latimer, the alleged 
fugitive slave, who was seized in Boston 
without Avarrant at the request of James B. 
Grey, of Norfolk, claiming to be his mas- 
ter. The case caused great excitement 
North and South. 

The blast from Freedom's Northern 
hills, upon its Southern way. 

Bears greeting to Virginia from Massa- 
chusetts Bay: 

No word of haughty challenging, nor 
battle bugle's peal, 

Nor steady tread of marching files, 
nor clang of horsemen's steel. 

No trains of deep-mouthed cannon 

along our highways go ; 
Around our silent arsenals untrodden 

lies the snow; 
And to the land-breeze of our ports, 

upon their errands far, 
A thousand sails of commerce swell, 

but none are spread for war. 

We hear thy threats, Virginia! thy 
stormy words and high 

Swell harshly on the Southern winds 
which melt along our sky ; 10 



MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA 



357 




Mount Vernon 



Yet, not one brown, hard hand fore- 
goes its honest labor here. 

No hewer of our mountain oaks sus- 
pends his axe in fear. 

Wild are the waves which lash the 
reefs along St. George's bank; 

Cold on the shores of Labrador the fog 
lies white and dank; 

Through storm, and wave, and blind- 
ing mist, stout are the hearts 
which man 

The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the 
sea-boats of Cape Ann. 

The cold north light and wintry sun 

glare on their icy forms, • 
Bent grimly o'er their straining lines 

or wrestling with the storms; 
Free as the winds they drive before, 

rough as the waves they roam, 
They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat 

against their rocky home. 20 

What means the Old Dominion ? Hath 

she forgot the day 
When o'er her conquered valleys 

swept the Briton's steel array ? 



How side by side, with sons of hers, 
the Massachusetts men 

Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, 
and stout Cornwallis, then ? 

Forgets she how the Bay State, in an- 
swer to the call 

Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke 
out from Faneuil Hall ? 

When, echoing back hor Henry's cry 
came pulsing on each breath 

Of Northern winds tlie thrilling sounds 
of "Liberty or Death!" 

What asks the Old Dominion ? If now 

her sons liave proved 
False to their fatliers' memory, false 

to the faith they loved; 30 

If she can scoff at Freedom, and its 

great charter spurn. 
Must we of Ma.ssachusetts from truth 

and duty turn ? 

We hunt your bondmen, flying from 
Slavery's hateful hell; 

Our voices, at your bidding, take up 
the bloodhoimd's yell; 



358 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



We gatlier, at your summons, above 

our fathers' graves, 
From Freedom's holy altar-horns to 

tear your wretclied slaves ! 

Thank God! not yet so vilely can 

Massachusetts bow; 
The spirit of her early time is with her 

even now; 
Dream not because her Pilgrim blood 

moves slow and calm and cool. 
She thus can stoop her chainless neck, 

a sister's slave and tool ! 40 

All that a sister State should do, all 

that a free State may. 
Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as 

in our early day; 
Hut that one dark loathsome burden 

ye must stagger with alone, 
And reap the bitter harvest which ye 

yourselves have sown ! 

Hold, while ye may, your struggling 

slaves, and burden God's free 

air 
With woman's shriek beneath the lash, 

and manhood's wild despair; 
Cling closer to the "cleaving curse" 

that writes upon your plains 
The blasting of Almighty wrath 

against a land of chains. 

Still shame your gallant ancestry, the 

cavaliers of old, 
By watcliing round the shambles 

where human flesh is sold; 50 
Gloat o'er the new-born child, and 

count his market value, when 
The maddened mother's cry of woe 

shall pierce the slaver's den ! 

Lower than plummet soundeth, sink 

the Virginia name; 
Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves 

with rankest weeds of shame; 
Be, if ye will, tiie scandal of God's fair 

universe; 
We wash our hands forever of your sin 

and shame and curse. 

A voice from lips whereon the coal 
from Freedom's shrine hath 
been, 

Thrilled, as but yesterdav, the hearts 
of Berkshire's mountain men: 



The echoes of that solemn voice are 

sadly lingering still 
In all our sunny valleys, on every 

wind-swept hill. 60 

And when the prowling man-thief 

came hunting for his prey 
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's 

shaft of gray, 
How, through the free lips of the son, 

the father's warning spoke; 
How, from its bonds of trade and sect, 

the Pilgrim city broke ! 

A hundred thousand right arms were 

lifted up on liigh, 
A hundred thousand voices sent back 

their loud reply; 
Through the thronged towns of Essex 

the startling summons rang, 
And up from bench and loom and 

wheel her young mechanics 



sprang 



The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of 

thousands as of one. 
The shaft of Bunker calling to that of 

Lexington; 70 

From Norfolk's ancient villages, from 

Plymouth's rocky bound 
To where Nantucket feels the arms of 

ocean close her round; 

From rich and rural Worcester, where 

through the calm repose 
Of cultured vales and fringing woods 

the gentle Nashua flows. 
To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the 

mountain larches stir. 
Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry 

of " God save Latimer ! " 

And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet 
with the salt sea spray; 

And Bristol sent her answering shout 
down Narragansett Bay ! 

Along the broad Connecticut old 
Hampden felt the thrill. 

And the cheer of Hampshire's wood- 
men swept down from Hol- 
yoke Hill. 80 

The voice of Massachusetts I Of her 
free sons and daughters, 

Deep calling unto deep aloud, the 
sound of many waters ! 



THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE 



359 



Against the burden of that voice what 
tyrant power shall stand ? 

No fetters in tlie Bay State ! No slave 
upon her land ! 

Look to it well, Virginians ! In calm- 
ness we have borne, 

In answer to our faith and trust, your 
insult and your scorn; 

You've spurned our kindest counsels; 
you've hunted for our lives; 

And shaken round our hearths and 
homes your manacles and 
gyves ! 

We wage no war, we lift no arm, we 

fling no torch within 
The fire-damps of the quaking mine 

beneath your soil of sin; oo 
We leave ye with your bondmen, to 

wrestle, wliile ye can, 
With the strong upward tendencies 

and godlike soul of man ! 

But for us and for our children, the 
vow which we have given 

For freedom and humanity is regis- 
tered in heaven; 

No slave-hunt in our borders, — no 
pirate on our strand ! 

No fetters in the Bay State, — no 
slave upon our land ! 



THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE 

In a publication of L. F. Tasistro — Ran- 
dom Shots and Southern Breezes — is a de- 
scription of a slave auction at New Orleans, 
at which the auctioneer recommended the 
woman on the stand as "a good Chris- 
tian! " 

A Christian ! going, gone ! 
Who bids for God's own image? for 

his grace, 
Which that poor victim of the market- 
place 
Hath in her suffering won ? 

My God ! can such things be ? 
Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is 

done 
Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest 
one 
Is even done to Thee ? 



In that sad victim, then, 
Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee 
stand; ,o 

Once rnore tlie jest-word of a mock- 
ing band. 
Bound, sold, and scourged 
again! 

A Christian up for sale I 
Wet with her blood your whips, o'er- 

task her frame, 
Make her life loathsome with your 
wrong and shame, 
Her patience shall not fail ! 

A heathen hand might deal 
Back on your heads the gathered 

wrong of years: 
But her low, broken prayer and 
nigiitly tears. 
Ye neither heed nor feel. 20 

Con well thy lesson o'er, 
Thou prudent teacher, tell the toiling 

slave 
No dangerous tale of Him who came to 
save 
The outcast and the poor. 

But wisely shut the ray 
Of God's free Gospel from lier simple 

heart, 
And to her darkened mind alone im- 
part 
One stern command, Obey ! 

So shalt tliou deftly raise 
The market price of human flesh ; and 
while .^o 

On thee, their pampered guest, the 
planters smile, 
Thy church shall praise. 

Grave, reverend men shall tell 
From Northern pulpits how thy work 

was blest, 
While in that vile South Sodom first 
and best. 
Thy poor disciples sell. 

Oh, shame! the Moslem thrall, 
Who, with his master, to the Prophet 

kneels. 
While turning to tlie sacred Kei)la 
feels 
His fetters break and fall. 40 



360 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Cheers for the turbaned Bey 
Of robber-peopled Tunis! he hath 

torn 
The dark sUive-dungeons open, and 
hath borne 
Their inmates into day : 

But our poor shive in vain 
Turns to the Christian shrine his ach- 
ing eyes; 
Its rites will only swell his market 
price, 
And rivet on his chain. 

God of all right ! how long 
Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar 
stand, so 

Lifting in prayer to Thee the bloody 
hand 
And haughty brow of wrong ? 

Oh, from the fields of cane, 
From the low rice-swamp, from the 

trader's cell; 
From the black slave-ship's foul and 
loathsome hell, 
And cofile's weary chain; 

Hoarse, horrible, and strong. 
Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry, 
Filling the arches of the hollow sky. 

How long, O God, how long ? 60 



THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. 
BROWN 

Ho ! thou who seekest late and long 

A License from the Holy Book 
For brutal lust and fiendish wrong, 

Man of the Pulpit, look ! 
Lift up those cold and atheist eyes. 

This ripe fruit of thy teaching see; 
And tell us how to heaven will rise 
The incense of this sacrifice — 

This blossom of the gallows tree! 

Search out for slavery's hour of need 10 
Some fitting text of sacred writ; 

Give lieaven the credit of a deed 
^ Whicli shames the nether pit. 

Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him 
Wliose truth is on thy lips a lie; 

Ask tliat His bright winged cherubim 

May bend around that scaffold grim 
To guard and bless and sanctify. 



O champion of the people's cause 1 

Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke 
Of foreign wrong and Old World's 
laws, 21 

Man of the Senate, look ! 
Was this the promise of the free. 

The great hope of our early time, 
That slavery's poison vine should be 
Upborne by Freedom's prayer-nursed 
tree 
O'erclustered with such fruits of 
crime ? 

Send out the summons East and 
West, 

And South and North, let all be 
there 
Where he who pitied the oppressed 30 

Swings out in sun and air. 
Let not a Democratic hand 

The grisly hangman's task refuse; 
There let each loyal patriot stand. 
Awaiting slavery's command. 

To twist the rope and draw the 



noose 



But vain is irony — unmeet 

Its cold rebuke for deeds which 
start 
In fiery and indignant beat 

The pulses of the heart. 40 

Leave studied wit and guarded phrase 

For those who think but do not feel; 

Let men speak out in words which 

raise 
Where'er they fall, an answering blaze 
Like flints which strike the fire from 
steel. 

Still let a mousing priesthood ply 

Their garbled text and gloss of sin. 
And make the lettered scroll deny 

Its living soul within: 
Still let the place-fed, titled knave so 

Plead robbery's right with pur- 
chased lips, 
And tell us that our fathers gave 
For Freedom's pedestal, a slave, 

The frieze and moulding, chains and 
whips ! 

But ye who own that Higher Law 
Whose tablets in the heart are set. 

Speak out in words of power and 
awe 
That God is living yet ! 



TEXAS 



361 



I 



Breathe forth once more those tones 
subUme 
Which thrilled the burdened pro- 
phet's lyre, 60 
And in a dark and evil time 
Smote down on Israel's fast of crime 
And gift of blood, a rain of fire ! 

Oh, not for us the graceful lay 

To whose soft measures lightly move 
The footsteps of the faun and fay, 

O'er-locked by mirth and love ! 
But such a stern and startling strain 

As Britain's hunted bards flung down 

From Snowden to the conquered 

plain, 70 

Where harshly clanked the Saxon 

chain 

On trampled field and smoking town. 

By Liberty's dishonored name. 

By man's lost hope and failing trust, 
By words and deeds which bow with 
shame 
Our foreheads to the dust, 
By the exulting strangers' sneer. 
Borne to us from the Old World's 
thrones. 
And by their victim's grief who hear. 
In sunless mines and dungeons 
drear, 80 

How Freedom's land her faith dis- 
owns ! 

Speak out in acts. The time for words 

Has passed, and deeds suffice alone; 
In vain against the clang of swords 

The wailing pipe is blown ! 
Act, act in God's name, while ye may ! 

Smite from the church her leprous 
limb ! 
Throw open to the light of day 
The bondman's cell, and break away 

The chains the state has bound on 
him ! 90 

Ho ! every true and living soul. 

To Freedom's perilled altar bear 
The Freeman's and the Christian's 
whole 

Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer ! 
One last, great battle for the right — 

One short, sharp struggle to be free ! 
To do is to succeed — our fight 
Is waged in Heaven's approving sight; 

The smile of God is Victory. 



TEXAS 

VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND 

The five poems imniediatelv following 
indicate the intense feeling of' the friends 
of freedom in view of the annexation of 
Texas, with its vast territory sufficient, as 
was boasted, for six new slave States. 

Up the hillside, down the glen. 
Rouse the sleeping citizen; 
Summon out the might of men ! 

Like a lion growling low. 
Like a night-storm rising slow, 
Like the tread of unseen foe; 

It is coming, it is nigh ! 

Stand your homes and altars by; 

On your own free thresholds die. 

Clang the bells in all your spires; 10 
On the gray hills of your sires 
Fling to heaven your signal-fires. 

From Wachuset, lone and bleak, 

Unto Berkshire's tallest peak, 

Let the flame-tongued heralds speak. 

Oh, for God and duty stand, 
Heart to heart and hand to hand 
Round the old graves of the land. 

Whoso shrinks or falters now, 
Whoso to the yoke would bow, 30 
Brand the craven on his brow ! 

Freedom's soil hath only place 
For a free and fearless race, 
None for traitors false and base. 

Perish party, perish clan; 
Strike together while ye can, 
Like the arm of one strong man. 



Like that angel's voice sublime, 
Heard above a world of crime, 
Crying of the end of time; 



30 



With one heart and with one mouth, 
Let the North unto the South 
Speak the word befitting both: 

" What though Tssachar bo strong I 
Ye may load his back with wrong 
Over rnuch and over long: 



362 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



" Patience with her cvip o'errim, 
Witli her weary thread outspun, 
Murmurs that her work is done. 

"Make our riiion-hond a chain, 40 
Weak as tow in Freedom's strain 
Link by Hnk shall snap in twain. 

" Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope 
Hind the starry cluster up, 
Shattered over heaven's blue cope ! 

"Give us bright though broken rays, 
Rather than eternal luize, 
Clouding o'er the full-orbed blaze. 

"Take your land of sun and bloom; 
( )nly leav(^ to Freedom room 5° 

For her plough, and forge, and loom; 

"Take your slavery-blackened vales; 
Leave us but our own free gales, 
Blowing on our thousand sails. 

"Boldly, or with treacherous art. 
Strike the l)lood-wrought chain apart; 
Break the Union's mighty heart; 

"Work the ruin, if ye will; 

Pluck upon your heads an ill 

Wiiich shall grow and deepen still. 60 

" With your bondman's right arm 

bare, 
With his heart of black despair. 
Stand alone, if stand ye dare ! 

"Onward with your fell design; 
l)ig the gulf and draw the line: 
Fire beneath your feet the mine: 

" Deeply, when the wide abyss 
Yawns l)etween your land and this, 
Shall ye feel your helplessness. 

" By the hearth, and in the l)ed, 70 
Shaken by a look or tread. 
Ye shall own a guilty dread. 

" And the curse of unpaid toil, 
Downward through your generous soil 
Like a fire shall burn and spoil. 

"Our bleak hills shall bud and blow, 
Vines our rocks shall overgrow, 
Plenty in our valleys flow; — 



"And when vengeance clouds your 

skies, 
Hither shall ye turn your eyes, 80 

As the lost on Paradise ! 

"We but ask our rocky strand. 
Freedom's true and brother band. 
Freedom's strong and honest hand; 

" Valleys by the slave untrod. 
And the Pilgrim's mountain sod, 
Blessed of our fathers' God ! " 



TO FANEUIL HALL 
1844 

Men ! if manhood still ye claim, 

If the Northern pidse can thrill. 
Roused by wrong or stung by shame, 

Freely, strongly still; 
Let the sounds of traffic die; 

Shut the mill-gate, leave the stall, 
Fling the axe and hammer by; 

Throng to Faneuil Hall ! 

Wrongs which freemen never brooked, 

Dangers grim and fierce as they, 10 
Which, like couching lions, looked 

On your fathers' way; 
These your instant zeal demand, 

Shaking with their earthquake-call 
Every rood of Pilgrim land, 

Ho, to Faneuil Hall ! 

From your capes and sandy bars, 

From your mountain-ridges cold, 
Through whose pines the westering 
stars 

Stoop flieir crowns of gold; 20 

Come, and with your footsteps wake 

Echoes from that holy wall; 
Once again, for Freedom's sake. 

Rock your fathers' hall ! 

LTp, and tread beneath your feet 

Every cord by party spun: 
Let your hearts together beat 

As the lieart of one. 
Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade, 

Let them rise or let them fall: 30 
Freedom asks your common aid, — 

Up, to Faneuil Hall ! 

Up, and let each voice that speaks 
Ring from thence to Southern plains, 



TO MASSACHUSETTS 



3^3 




Faueuil Hall 



Sharply as the blow which breaks 

Prison-bolts and chains ! 
Speak as well becomes the free: 

Dreaded more than steel or l^all, 
Shall your calmest utterance be, 

Heard from Faneuil Hall ! 40 

Have they wronged us ? Let us then 

Render back nor threats nor pray- 
ers; 
Have they chained our free-born men ? 

Let us unchain tlieirs ! 
Up, your banner leads the van, 

Blazoned, "Liberty for all!" 
Finish what your sires began ! 

Up, to Faneuil Hall ! 



TO MASSACHUSETTS 
1844 

What though around thee blazes 

No fiery rallying sign ? 
From all thy own high places, 

Give heaven the light of thine ! 



What though unthrilled, unmoving, 
The statesman stand apart. 

And comes no warm approving 
From Mammon's crowded mart ? 

Still let the land be shaken 

By a summons of thine own ! 10 
By all save truth forsaken. 

Stand fast with that alone ! 
Shrink not from strife une(iM;il! 

With the best is always hope; 
And ever in the sequel 

God holds tiie right side up ! 

But when, with thine uniting, 

Come voices long and loud, 
And far-off hills are writing 

Thy fire-words on the cloud; ao 

When from Penobscot's fountains 

A deep response is heard. 
And across the Western moun- 
tains 

Rolls back thy rallying word; 

Shall thv line of battl(> falter. 
With "its allies just in view ? 



364 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Oh, by hearth and holy altar, 

Mv fatlicrland, be true! 
Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom! 

Speed them onward far and fast ! 30 
Over liill and valley speed them, 

Like the sibyl's on the blast I 

Lo ! the Empire State is shaking 

The shackles from her hand; 
Witli the rugged North is waking 

The level sunset land ! 
On they come, the free battalions! 

East and West and North they come, 
And the heart-beat of tlie millions 

Is the beat of Freedom's drum. 40 

"To the tyrant's plot no favor! 

No heed to place-fed knaves ! 
Bar and bolt the door forever 

Against tlie land of slaves ! " 
Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it, 

The heavens above us spread ! 
The land is roused, — its spirit 

Was sleeping, but not dead ! 



NEW HAMPSHIRE 

1845 

God bless New Hampsliire ! from her 

granite peaks 
Once more the voice of Stark and 

Langdon speaks. 
The long-bound vassal of the exulting 
South 
For very shame her self-forged chain 
has broken; 
Torn the black seal of slavery from her 
mouth, 
And in the clear tones of her old 
time spoken ! 
Oh, all undreamed-of, all unhoped-for 
changes ! 
The tyrant's ally proves his sternest 
foe; 
To all his biddings, from her mountain 
ranges. 
New Hampshire thunders an indig- 
nant No ! 
Wlio is it now despairs? Oli, faint of 
heart, 
Look ui)ward to those Northern 

mountains cold. 
Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag 
unrolled, 



And gather strength to bear a manlier 

part ! 
All is not lost. The angel of God's 

blessing 
Encamps with Freedom on the field 

of fight; 
Still to her banner, day by day, are 

pressing 
Unlooked-for allies, striking for the 

right ! 
Courage, then. Northern hearts! Be 

firm, be true: 
What one brave State hath done, can 

ye not also do ? 

THE PINE-TREE 

1846 

Lift again the stately eml^lem on the 

Bay State's rusted shield, 
Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree 

on our banner's tattered field. 
Sons of men who sat in council with 

their Bibles round the board, 
Answering England's royal missive 

with a firm, "Thus saith the 

Lord!" 
Rise again for home and freedom ! set 

the battle in array ! 
What the fathers did of old time we 

their sons must do to-day 

Tell us not of banks and tarifTs, cease 

your paltry pedler cries; 
Shall the good State sink her honor that 

your gambling stocks may rise? 
Would ye barter man for cotton ? That 

your gains may sum up higher 
Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass 

our children through the fire? 
Is the dollar only real ? God and truth 

and right a dream ? 
Weighed against your lying ledgers 

must our manhood kick the 

beam? 

O my God ! for that free spirit, which 
of old in Boston town 

Smote the Province House with ter- 
ror, struck the crest of Andros 
down ! 

For another strong-voiced Adams in 
the city's streets to cry, 

" Up for God and Massachusetts ! Set 
your feet on Mammon's lie ! 



TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN 




John C. Calhoun 



Perish banks and perish traffic, spin 
your cotton's latest pound, 

But in Heaven's name keep your 
honor, keep the heart o' the 
Bay State sound!" 

Where's the man for Massachusetts? 

Where's the voice to speak her 

free? 
Where 's the hand to hght up bonfires 

from her mountains to the 

sea? 
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? 

Sits she dumb in her de- 
spair ? 
Has she none to break the silence? 

Has she none to do^and dare ? 



O my God ! for one right worthy to 
lift up her rusted shiokl, 

And to plant again the Pino-Troo in 
her banner's tattered field ! 



TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN 

1846 

Is this thy voice whose treble notes of 

fear 
Wail in the wind? And dost thou 

shake to hear, 
Acta?on-like, the bay of thine own 

hounds, 
Spurning the leash, and k'aping o'er 

their bounds? 



366 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Sore-baliied statesman! when thy 

eager liand, 
With game afoot, unshpped the Imn- 

grv pack, 
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen 

hind, 
Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, 

douliHng back. 
These dogs of thine might snuff on 

Shivery's track? 
Where's now the l)oast, which even 

thy guarded tongue, lo 

Cold, cafm, and proud, in the teeth o' 

the Senate flung. 
O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan, 
Like Satan's triumph at the fall of 

man? 
How stood'st thou then, thy feet on 

Freedom planting, 
And pointing to the lurid heaven afar. 
Whence all could see, through the 

south windows slanting, 
Crimson as blood, the beams of that 

Lone Star ! 
The Fates are just; they give us but 

our own; 
Nemesis ripens what our hands have 

sown. 
There is an Eastern story, not un- 
known, 20 
Doubtless, to thee, of one whose 

magic skill 
Called demons up his water-jars to 

fill; 
Deftly and silently, they did his will. 
But, when the task was done, kept 

pouring still. 
In vain with spell and charm the wiz- 
ard wrought, 
Faster and faster were the buckets 

brought. 
Higher and higher rose the flood 

around. 
Till the fiends clapped their hands 

above their master drowned ! 
So, Carolinian, it may prove with 

thee, 30 

For God still overrules man's schemes, 

and takes 
Craftiness in its self-set snare, and 

makes 
The wrath of man to praise Him. It 

may be, 
That the roused spirits of Democracy 
May leave to freer States the same 

wide door 



Through which thy slave-cursed Texas 

entered in. 
From out the blood and fire, the wrong 

and sin, 
Of the stormed city and the ghastly 

plain. 
Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody 

rain, 
Tlie myriad-handed pioneer may pour, 
And the wild West with the roused 

North combine 41 

And heave the engineer of evil with 

his mine. 



AT WASHINGTON 

Suggested by a visit to the city of Wash- 
ington, in the i2th month of 1845. 

With a cold and wintry noon-light 

On its roofs and steeples shed. 
Shadows weaving with the sunlight 
From the gray sky overhead, 
Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies 
the half-built town outspread. 

Through this broad street, restless 
ever. 
Ebbs and flows a human tide, 
Wave on wave a living river; 

Wealth and fashion side by side; 

Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the 

same quick current glide. 10 

Underneath yon dome, whose coping 
Springs above them, vast and tall, 
Grave men in the dust are groping 
For the largess, base and small, 
Which the hand of Power is scatter- 
ing, crumbs which from its 
table fall. 

Base of heart ! They vilely barter 

Honor's wealth for party's place; 

Step by step on Freedom's charter 

Leaving footprints of disgrace; 

For to-day's poor pittance turning 

from the great hope of their 

race. 20 

Yet, where festal lamps are throw- 
ing 
Glory round the dancer's hair. 

Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flow- 
ing 



AT WASHINGTON 



367 



Backward on the sunset air; 
And tlie low quick pulse of music beats 
its measure sweet and rare: 

There to-night shall woman's glan- 
ces, 
Star-like, welcome give to them; 
Fawning fools with shy advances 
Seek to touch their garments' 
hem. 
With the tongue of flattery glozing 
deeds which God and Truth 
condemn. 30 

From this glittering lie my vision 
Takes a broader, sadder range, 
Full before me have arisen 

Other pictures dark and strange; 

From the parlor to the prison must 

the scene and witness change. 

Hark ! the heavy gate is swinging 

On its hinges, harsh and slow; 
One pale prison lamp is flinging 
On a fearful group below 
Such a light as leaves to terror what- 
soe'er it does not show. 4° 

Pitying God ! Is that a woman 
On whose wrist the shackles 
clash ? 
Is that shriek she utters human, 
Underneath the stinging lash ? 
Are they men whose eyes of madness 
from that sad procession flash ? 

Still the dance goes gayly onward ! 

What is it to Wealth and Pride 
That without the stars are looking 
On a scene which earth should hide? 
That the slave-ship lies in waiting, 
rocking on Potomac's tide ! so 

Vainly to that mean Ambition 

Wiiich, upon a rival's fall, 
Winds above its old condition. 
With a reptile's slimy crawl, 
Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, 
shall the slave in anguish call. 

Vainly to the child of Fashion, 

Giving to ideal woe 
Graceful luxury of compassion, 
Shafl the stricken mourner go; 
Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, 
beautiful the hollow show ! 60 



Nay, my words are all too sweep- 
ing: 
In tliis crowded human mart. 
Feeling is not dead, but sl('('{)(>th; 
Man's strong will and woman's 
heart. 
In the coming strife for Freedom, yet 
shall bear their generous part. 

And from yonder sunny valleys, 

Southward in the distance lost, 
Freedom yet shall summon iillios 
Worthier than tlie Nortli can 
boa-st, 
With the Evil by their heart h-.stones 
grappling at severer cost. 70 

Now, tlie soul alone is willing: 
Faint the heart and weak the 
knee; 
And as yet no lip is thrilling 

With the mighty words, " He 
Free!" 
Tarrieth long the land's Good .\ngcl. 
but his advent is to be ! 

Meanwhile, turning from the revel 

To the prison-cell my sight. 
For intenser hate of evil, 
For a keener sense of right. 
Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, 
City of the Slaves, to-night ! 80 

" To thy duty now and ever ! 

Dream no more of rest or stay : 
Give to Freedom's great endeavor 
All thou art and ha.st to-day:'' 
Thus, above the city's nnirmur, saith 
a Voice, or seems to say. 



Ye with heart and vision gifted 

To discern and love the right. 

Whose worn faces have been lifted 

To the slowly-growing light, 8<^ 

Where from Freedom's sunri.se drifted 

slowlv back the murk of night ! 



'■'/ 



Ye who through long years of trial 

Still have hold your purpose fa.st. 

While a lengthening shade the dial 

From the westering sunshine ca.st. 

And of hope each hour's denial 

seemed an echo of the la.st ! 

O my brothers ! ( ) my sisters ! 
Would to God that ye were near. 



368 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Gazing with inc down the vistas 
Of a sorrow strange and drear; 
Would to God that ye were listeners to 
the Voice I seem to hear! loo 

With tlie storm above us driving, 
With the false earth mined be- 
low, 
Who shall marvel if thus striving 
We have counted friend as foe; 
Unto one another giving in the dark- 
ness blow for blow. 

Well it may be that our natures 
Have grown sterner and more 
hard. 
And the freshness of their features 
Somewhat harsh and battle- 
scarred, 
And their harmonies of feeling over- 
tasked and rudely jarred, no 

Be it so. It should not swerve us 

From a purpose true and brave; 
Dearer Freedom's rugged service 
Than the pastime of the slave; 
Better is the storm above it than the 
quiet of the grave. 

Let us then, uniting, bury 

All our idle feuds in dust. 
And to future conflicts carry 

Mutual faith and common trust; 

Always he who most forgiveth in his 

brother is most just. 120 

From the eternal shadow rounding 

AH our sun and starlight here. 
Voices of our lost ones sounding 
Bid us be of heart and cheer. 
Through the silence, down the spaces, 
falling on the inward ear. 

Know we not our dead are looking 

Downward with a sad surprise. 
All our strife of words rebuking 
With tlieir mild and loving eyes? 
Shall we grieve tlie holy angels ? Shall 
we cloud their blessed skies? 140 

Let us draw their mantles o'er us 
Which have fallen in our way; 
Let us do the work before us, 
Cheerlv, bravely, while we may. 
Ere the long night-silence cometh, and 
with us it is not day ! 



THE BRANDED HAND 
1846 

Welcome home again, brave seaman ! 

with thy thoughtful brow and 

gray. 
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, 

better day; 
With that front of calm endurance, on 

whose steady nerve in vain 
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote 

the fiery shafts of pain ! 

Is the tyrant's brand upon thee ? Did 
the brutal cravens aim 

To make God's truth thy falsehood, 
His holiest work thy shame? 

When, all blood-quenched, from the 
torture the iron was with- 
drawn. 

How laughed their evil angel the baf- 
fled fools to scorn ! 

They change to wrong the duty which 

God hath written out 
On the great heart of humanity, too 

legible for doubt ! 10 

They, the loathsome moral lepers, 

blotched from footsole up to 

crown, 
Give to shame what God hath given 

unto honor and renown ! 

Why, that brand is highest honor! 

than its traces never yet 
Upon old armorial hatchments was a 

prouder blazon set; 
And thy unborn generations, as they 

tread our rocky strand, 
Shall tell with pride the story of their 

father's branded hand! 

As the Templar home was welcome, 

bearing back from Syrian wars 
The scars of Arab lances and of Pay- 

nim scimitars. 
The pallor of the prison, and the 

shackle's crimson span. 
So we meet thee, so we greet thee, 

truest friend of God and man. 

He suffered for the ransom of the dear 
Redeemer's grave, 21 

Thou for His living presence in the 
bound and bleeding slave; 



THE FREED ISLANDS 



369 



He for a soil no longer by the feet of 
angels trod, 

Thou for the true Shechinah, the pre- 
sent home of God ! 

For, while the jurist, sitting with the 

slave-whip o'er him swung, 
From the tortured truths of freedom 

the lie of slavery wrung, 
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on 

each God-deserted shrine, 
Broke the bondman's heart for bread, 

poured the bondman's blood 

for wine; 

While the multitude in blindness to a 

far-off Saviour knelt. 
And spurned, the while, the temple 

where a present Saviour 

dwelt ; 
Thou beheld'st Him in the task-field, 

in the prison shadows dim, 31 
And thy mercy to the bondman, it 

was mercy unto Him ! 

In thy lone and long night-watches, 

sky above and wave below, 
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than 

the babbling schoolmen know; 
God's stars and silence taught thee, as 

His angels only can. 
That the one sole sacred thing beneath 

the cope of heaven is Man ! 

That he who treads profanely on the 

scrolls of law and creed. 
In the depth of God's great goodness 

may find mercy in his need; 
But woe to him who crushes the soul 

with chain and rod. 
And herds with lower natures the 

awful form of God ! 40 

Then lift that manly right-hand, bold 
ploughman of the wave ! 

Its branded palm shall prophesy, " Sal- 
vation to the Slave!" 

Hold up its fire-wrought language, 
that whoso reads may feel 

His heart swell strong within him, his 
sinews change to steel. 

Hold it up before our sunshine, up 
against our Northern air; 

Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the 
love of God, look there ! 



Take it henceforth for your standard, 
hke the Bruce's heart of yore, 

In the dark strife closing round ye, let 
that hand be seen before ! 

And the masters of the slave-land 
shall tremble at that sign. 

When it points its finger Soutliward 
along the Puritan line : so 

Can the craft of State avail them ! 
Can a Christless church with- 
stand, 

In the van of Freedom's onset, the 
coming of that hand ? 



THE FREED ISLANDS 

1846 

A FEW brief years have passed away 
Since Britain drove her million 
slaves 
Beneath the tropic's fiery ray: 
God willed their freedom ; and to-day 
Life blooms above those island 
graves ! 

He spoke ! across the Carib Sea, 
We heard the clash of breaking 
chains. 
And felt the heart-throb of the free, 
The first strong pulse of liljerty 

Which thrilled along the bondman's 
veins. '» 

Though long delayed, and far, and 
slow. 
The Briton's triumpli sliall be ours: 
Wears slavery here a prouder brow 
Than that which twelve short years ago 
Scowled darkly from her islanii 
bowers ? 

Mighty alike for good or ill 

With Mother-land, we fully share 
The Saxon strength, the nerve of 

steel, 
The tireless energy of will. 

The power to do, the pnde to dare. 

What she has done can wo not do? 21 

Our hour and men are both at haml; 

The blast which Freedom's ang(M i>l«nv 

O'er her green islands, echoes through 

Each valley of our forest land. 



37° 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Hear it, old Europe ! we have sworn 
The death of slavery. When it falls, 
Look to your vassals in their turn. 
Your poor dumb millions, crushed 
and worn, 
Your prisons and your palace 
walls ! 30 

O kingly mockers ! scoffing show 
What deeds in Freedom's name we 
do; 
\'('t know that every taunt ye throw 
Across the waters, goads our slow 
Progression towards the right and 
true. 

Not always shall your outraged poor, 
Appalled by democratic crime. 

Grind as their fathers ground before; 

The hour which sees our prison door 
Swing wide shall be their triumph 
time. 40 

On then my brothers ! every blow 
Ye deal is felt the wide earth 
through; 
Whatever here uplifts the low 
Or humbles Freedom's hateful foe, 
Blesses the Old World through the 
New. 

Take heart ! The promised hour draws 
near; 
I hear the downward beat of wings. 
And Freedom's trumpet sounding 

clear : 
"Joy to the people! woe and fear 
To new-world tyrants, old-world 
kings!" 50 



A LETTER 

'T^is over. Moses ! All is lost ! 

I hear the bells a-ringing; 
Of Pharaoh and his lied Sea host 

I hear the Free-Wills singing. 
We're routed, Moses, horse and foot. 

If there be truth in figures, 
With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit, 

And Hale, and all the "niggers." 

Alack ! alas ! this month or more 
We've felt a sad foreboding; 10 

Our verv dreams the burden bore 
Of central cliques exploding; 



Before our eyes a furnace shone 
Where heads of dough were roast- 
ing, 

And one we took to be your own 
The traitor Hale was toasting ! 

Our Belknap brother heard with awe 

The Congo minstrels playing; 
At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt saw 

The ghost of Storrs a-praying; 20 
And Carroll's woods were sad to see. 

With black-winged crows a-dart- 
ing; 
And Black Snout looked on Ossipee, 

New-glossed with Day and Martin. 

We thought the "Old Man of the 
Notch" 
His face seemed changing wholly — 
His lips seemed thick ; his nose seemed 
flat; 
His misty hair looked woolly; 
And Coos teamsters, shrieking, fled 

From the metamorphosed figure. 30 
"Look there!" they said, "the Old 
Stone Head 
Himself is turning nigger ! " 

The schoolhouse, out of Canaan 
hauled, 

Seemed turning on its track again, 
And like a great swamp-turtle crawled 

To Canaan village back again, 
Shook off the mud and settled flat 

Upon its underpinning; 
A nigger on its ridge-pole sat, 

From ear to ear a-grinning, 40 

Gray H d heard o' nights the sound 

Of rail-cars onward faring; 
Right over Democratic ground 

The iron horse came tearing. 
A flag waved o'er that spectral train, 

As high as Pittsfield steeple; 
Its emblem was a broken chain, 

Its motto : " To the people ! " 

I dreamed that Charley took his bed, 

With Hale for his physician; 50 

His daily dose an old " unread 

And unref erred" petition. 
There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat. 

As near as near could be, man; 
They leeched him with the "Demo- 
crat;" 

They blistered with the " Freeman." 



LINES 



371 



Ah! grisly portents! What avail 

Your terrors of forewarning? 
We wake to find the nightmare Hale 

Astride our breasts at morning ! 60 
From Portsmouth lights to Indian 
stream 

Our foes their throats are trying; 
The very factory-spindles seem 

To mock us while they 're flying. 

The hills have bonfires; in our streets 

Flags flout us in our faces; 
The newsboys, peddling off their 
sheets, 

Are hoarse with our disgraces. 
In vain we turn, for gibing wit 

And shoutings follow after, 70 

As if old Kearsarge had split 

His granite sides with laughter ! 

What boots it that we pelted out 

The anti-slavery women, 
And bravely strewed their hall about 

With tattered lace and trimming ? 
Was it for such a sad reverse 

Our mobs became peacemakers, 
And kept their tar and wooden horse 

For Englishmen and Quakers ? 80 

For this did shifty Atherton 

Make gag rules for the Great House? 
Wiped we for this our feet upon 

Petitions in our State House ? 
Plied we for this our axe of doom, 

No stubborn traitor sparing. 
Who scoffed at our opinion loom, 

And took to homespun wearing ? 



90 



Ah, Moses ! hard it is to scan 

These crooked providences, 
Deducing from the wisest plan 

The saddest consequences ! 
Strange that, in trampling as was meet 

The nigger-men's petition. 
We sprung a mine beneath our feet 

Which opened up perdition. 

How goodly, Moses, was the game 
In which we've long been actors. 

Supplying freedom with the name 
And slavery with the practice ! 100 

Our smooth words fed the people's 
mouth, 
Their ears our party rattle; 

We kept them headed to the South, 

As drovers do their cattle. 



But now our game of politics 

The world at large is learning; 
And men grown gray in all our tricks 

State's evidence are turning. 
Votes and preambles suljtly spun 

Tiiey cram witli meanings louder, no 
And load the Democratic gun 

With abolition, powder. 

The ides of June ! Woe worth the day 

When, turning all tilings over. 
The traitor Hale shall make liis hay 

From Democratic clover! 
Who then shall take him in the law, 

Who punish crime so flagrant? 
Whose hand shall serve, wiiose pen 
shall draw, 

A writ against that " vagrant"? 120 

Alas ! no hope is left us here, 

And one can only pine for 
The envied place of overseer 

Of slaves in Carolina ! 
Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink, 

And see what pay he 's giving ! 
We've practised long enough, we 
think, 

To know the art of driving. 

And for the faithful rank and file, 

Who know their proper stations, 130 
Perhaps it may l)e worth tlioir while 

To try the rice plantations. 
Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff. 

To see us southward scamper; 
The slaves, we know, are " better off 

Than laborers in New Hampshire" I 



LINES 

FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL 
FRIEND 

A STRENGTH Thv scrvice cannot tire. 

A faith whichdoubt can never dim, 
A heart of love, a lip of fire, 

O Freedom's God ! be Thou to him ! 

Speak through him words of power 
and fear. 
As through Thv prophet bards of 
old. 
And let a scornful ]->eoi>le hear 

Once more Thy Sinai-thunders 
rolled. 



372 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



For lying lips Thy blessing seek, 
And iVands of blood are raised to 
Thee, 
And on Thy cliildren, crushed and 
weak, 
The oppressor plants his kneeling 
knee. 

Let then, () God! Thy servant dare 
Thy truth in all its power to tell, 

Unmask the priestly tliieves, and tear 
The Bible from the grasp of hell ! 

From hollow rite and narrow span 
Of law and sect by Tliee released 

Oh, teach liim that the Christian man 
Is holier than the Jewish priest. 

Chase back the shadows, gray and old, 
Of the dead ages from his way, 

And let his hopeful eyes behold 
The dawn of Thy millennial day ; 

That day when fettered limb and 
mind 
Shall know the truth which maketh 
free, 
And he alone who loves his kind 
Shall, childlike, claim the love of 
Thee ! 



DANIEL NEALL 



Friend of the Slave, and yet the 
friend of all; 
Ijover of peace, yet ever foremost 

when 
The need of battling Freedom called 
for men 

To plant the l)anner on the outer wall; 

Gentle and kindly, ever at distress 

Melted to more than woman's tender- 
ness. 

Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's 
post 

Fronting the violence of a maddened 
host. 

Like some gray rock from which the 
waves are tossed ! 

Knowing his deeds of love, men ques- 
tioned not 
The faith of one whose v/alk and 
word were right; 



Who tranquilly in Life's great task- 
field WTOUght, 

And, side by side with evil, scarcely 
caught 
A stain upon his pilgrim garb of 
white: 

Prompt to redress another's wrong, 
his own 

Leaving to Time and Truth and Peni- 
tence alone. 



II 



Such was our friend. Formed on the 
good old plan, 

A true and brave and downright hon- 
est man ! 

He blew no trumpet in the market- 
place. 

Nor in the church with hypocritic face 

Supplied with cant the lack of Chris- 
tian grace; 

Loathing pretence, he did with cheer- 
ful will 

What others talked of while their 
hands were still; 

And, while "Lord, Lord!" the pious 
tyrants cried. 

Who, in the poor, their Master cruci- 
fied. 

His daily prayer, far better under- 
stood 

In acts than words, was simply doing 
good. 

So calm, so constant was his rectitude. 

That by his loss alone we know its 
worth. 

And feel how true a man has walked 
with us on earth. 



SONG OF SLAVES IN THE 
DESERT 

Where are we going? where are we 
going. 

Where are we going, Rubee ? 
Lord of peoples, lord of lands. 
Look across these shining sands, 
Through the furnace of the noon. 
Through the white light of tlie moon. 
Strong the Ghiblee wind is blowing. 
Strange and large the world is grow- 
ing! 
Speak and tell us where we are going, 

Where are we going, Rubee ? lo 



YORKTOWN 



373 



I 



Bornou land was rich and good, 
Wells of water, fields of food, 
Dourra fields, and bloom of bean. 
And the palm-tree cool and green: 
Bornou land we see no longer. 
Here we thirst and here we hunger. 
Here the Moor-man smites in anger: 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 

When we went from Bornou land, 
We were like the leaves and sand, 
We were many, we are few; 21 

Life has one, and death has two: 
Whitened l^ones our path are showing, 
Thou All-seeing, thou All-knowing ! 
Hear us, tell us, where are we going. 
Where are we going, Rubee? 

Moons of marches from our eyes 
Bornou land behind us lies; 
Stranger round us day by day 
Bends the desert circle gray; 30 

Wild the waves of sand are flowing. 
Hot the winds above them blowing, — 
Lord of all things ! where are we 
going ? 
Where are we going, Rubee? 

We are weak, but Thou art strong; 
Short our lives, but Thine is long; 
We are blind, but Thou hast eyes; 
We are fools, but Thou art wise ! 
Thou, our morrow's pathway knowing 
Through the strange world round us 
growing, 40 

Hear us, tell us where are we going, 
Where are we going, Rubee? 



TO DELAWARE 

"Written during the discussion in the Leg;- 
islatiire of that State, in the winter of 
1846-47, of a bill for the abolition of slavery. 

Thrice welcome to thy sisters of the 
East, 
To the strong tillers of a rugged 
home, 
With spray-wet locks to Northern 
winds released. 
And hardy feet o'erswept by ocean's 
foam ; 
And to the young nymphs of the gol- 
den West, 
Whose harvest mantles, fringed 
with prairie bloom, 



Trail in the sunset, — O redeemed and 
blest. 
To the warm welcome of thy sis- 
ters come ! 
Broad Pennsylvania, down her sail- 
white bay 
Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from 
her plains. 
And the great lakes, where echo, free 
alway. 
Moaned never shoreward with tlie 
clank of chains, 
Shall weave new sun-bows in their 

tossing spray. 
And all their waves keep grateful holi- 
day. 
And, smiling on thee through her 
mountain rains, 
Vermont shall bless thee; and the 
granite peaks, 
And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, 

shall wear 
Their snow-cro\Mis brighter in the 
cold, keen air; 
And Massachusetts, with her rug- 
ged cheeks 
O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn 
to thee. 
When, at thy bidding, the electric 

wire 
Shall tremble northward with its 
words of fire; 
Glory and praise to God! another 
State is free ! 



YORKTOWN 

From Yorktown's ruins, ranked and 

still, 
Two lines stretch far o'er vale and 

hill: 
Who curbs his steed at head of oiie? 
Hark! tlie low murmur: Wa.sliing- 

ton! 
Who bends his keen, ai)pr()vmg 

glance. 
Where down the gorgeous line of 

France 
Shine knightly star and plume of 

snow ? 
Thou too art victor, Rochainbeau ! 

The earth which bears this calm array 
Shook with the war-charge yester- 
day, 



374 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and 

wheel, 
Shot-sown and bladed thick with 

steel; 
October's clear and noonday sun 
Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun, 
And down night's double blackness 

fell, 
Like a dropped star, the blazing shell. 

Now all is hushed: the gleaming lines 
Stand moveless as the neighboring 

pines; 
While through them, sullen, grim, and 

slow. 
The conquered hosts of England go : 20 
O'Hara's brow belies his dress. 
Gay Tarleton's troop rides bannerless: 
Shout, from thy fired and wasted 

homes, 
Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes ! 

Xor thou alone: with one glad voice 
Let all thy sister States rejoice; 
Let Freedom, in whatever clime 
She waits with sleepless eye her time. 
Shouting from cave and mountain 

wood 
Make glad her desert solitude, 30 

While they who hunt her quail with 

fear; 
The New World's chain lies broken 

here ! 

But who are they, who, cowering, 

wait 
Within the shattered fortress gate ? 
Dark tillers of Virginia's soil, 
Classed with the battle's common 

spoil. 
With household stuffs, and fowl, and 

swine. 
With Indian weed and planters' wine, 
With stolen beeves, and foraged 

corn, — 
Are they not men, Virginian born ? 40 

Oh, veil your faces, young and brave ! 
Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier grave! 
Sons of the Northland, ye who set 
Stout hearts against the bayonet, 
And pressed with steady footfall near 
The moated battery's blazing tier, 
Turn your scarred faces from the 

sight, 
Let shame do homage to the right 1 



Lo ! fourscore years have passed; and 

where 
The Gallic bugles stirred the air, so 
And, through breached batteries, side 

by side, 
To victory stormed the hosts allied. 
And brave foes grounded, pale with 

pain. 
The arms they might not lift again, 
As abject as in that old day 
The slave still toils his life away. 

Oh, fields still green and fresh in story, 
Old days of pride, old names of glory. 
Old marvels of the tongue and pen. 
Old thoughts which stirred the hearts 

of men, 60 

Ye spared the wrong; and over all 
Behold the avenging shadow fall ! 
Your world-wide honor stained with 

shame, — 
Your freedom's self a hollow name ! 

Where's now the flag of that old 

war? 
Where flows its stripe ? Where burns 

its star? 
Bear witness, Palo Alto's day, 
Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey, 
Where Mexic Freedom, young and 

weak, 
Fleshes the Northern eagle's beak; 70 
Symbol of terror and despair. 
Of chains and slaves, go seek it there ! 

Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks! 
Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva's 

banks ! 
Brave sport to see the fledgling born 
Of Freedom by its parent torn ! 
Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell. 
Safe drear Siberia's frozen hell: 78 
With Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled, 
What of the'New World fears the Old ? 



RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE 

O Mother Earth ! upon thy lap 

Thy weary ones receiving, 
And o'er them, silent as a dream, 

Thy grassy mantle weaving. 
Fold softly in thy long embrace 

That heart so worn and broken, 
And cool its pulse of fire beneath 

Thy shadows old and oaken. 



RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE 



375 




The Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown 



Shut out from him the bitter word 

And serpent hiss of scorning; lo 
Nor let the storms of yesterday 

Disturb his quiet morning. 
Breathe over him forgetfulness 

Of all save deeds of kindness, 
And, save to smiles of grateful 
eyes, 

Press down his lids in blindness. 

There, where with living ear and 
eye 

He heard Potomac's flowing, 
And, through his tall ancestral trees, 

Saw autumn's sunset glowing, 20 
He sleeps, still looking to the west, 

Beneath the dark wood shadow, 
As if he still would see the sun 

Sink down on wave and meadow. 

Bard, Sage, and Tribune ! in himself 

All moods of mind contrasting, — 
The tenderest wail of human woe. 

The scorn like lightning blasting; 
The pathos which from rival eyes 

Unwilhng tears could summon, 30 
The stinging taunt, the fiery burst 

Of hatred scarcely human ! 



Mirth, sparkling like a diamond 
shower. 

From lips of life-long sadness; 
Clear picturings of majestic thought 

Upon a ground of madness; 
And over all Uomance and Song 

A classic beauty' throwing. 
And laurelled Clio at his side 

Her storied pages showing. 40 

All parties feared him: each in turn 

Beheld its scliemes disjointed, 
As riglit or left his fatal glance 

And spectral finger pointed. 
Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down 

With trenchant wit unsparing. 
And, mocking, rent with ruthless 
hand 

The robe Pretence was wearing. 



Too honest or too proud to feign 

A love he never cherislicd, 
Beyond Virginia's border line 

His patriotism perished. 
While others hailed in distant skies 

Our eagle's dusky pinion, 
He onlv saw the mountain bird 

Stoop o'er his Old Dominion ! 



so 



376 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Still throiigii each change of fortune 
strange, 
Racked nerve, and brain all burn- 

i"K- 
His loving faith in Mother-land 

Knew never shade of turning; 60 
By Britain's lakes, by Neva's tide, 

Whatever sky was o'er him, 
He heard her rivers' rushing sound. 

Her blue peaks rose before him. 

He lield his slaves, yet made withal 

No false and vain pretences. 
Nor paid a lying priest to seek 

For Scriptural defences. 
His harshest words of proud rebuke, 

His bitterest taunt and scorning, 70 
Fell fire-like on the Northern brow 

That bent to him in fawning. 

He held his slaves; yet kept the while 

His reverence for the Human; 
In the dark vassals of his will 

He saw but Man and Woman ! 
No hunter of God's outraged poor 

His Roanoke valley entered; 
No trader in the souls of men 

Across his threshold ventured. 80 

And when the old and wearied man 

Lay down for his last sleeping. 
And at his side, a slave no more. 

His brother-man stood weeping. 
His latest thought, his latest breath, 

To Freedom's d"uty giving, 
With failing tongue and trembling 
hand 

The dying blest the living. 

Oh, never bore his ancient State 

A truer son or braver ! 90 

None trampling w^ith a calmer scorn 

On foreign hate or favor. 
Ho knew her faults, yet never stooped 

His proud and manly feeling 
To poor excuses of the wrong 

Or meanness of concealing. 

But none l)eheld with clearer eye 
The plague-spot o'er her spread- 
ing. 
None heard more sure the steps of 
Doom 
Along her future treading. 100 

For her as for himself he spake. 
When, his gaunt frame upbracing, 



He traced with dying hand ' Re- 
morse ! ' ' 
And perished in the tracing. 

As from the grave where Henry sleeps, 

From Vernon's weeping willow, 
And from the grassy pall which hides 

The Sage of Monticello, 
So from the leaf -strewn burial -stone 

Of Randolph's lowly dwelling, no 
Virginia ! o'er thy land of slaves 

A warning voice is swelling ! 

And hark ! from thy deserted fields 

Are sadder warnings spoken, 
From quenched hearths, where thy 
exiled sons 

Their household gods have broken. 
The curse is on thee, — wolves for 
men. 

And briers for corn-sheaves giving ! 
Oh, more than all thy dead renown 

Were now one hero living! 120 



THE LOST STATESMAN 

WRITTEN ON HEARING OF THE DEATH 
OF SILAS WRIGHT OF NEW YORK 

As they who, tossing midst the storm 

at night. 
While turning shoreward, where a 

beacon shone. 
Meet the walled blackness of the 

heaven alone. 
So, on the turbulent waves of party 

tossed. 
In gloom and tempest, men have seen 

thy light 
Quenched in the darkness. At thy 

hour of noon. 
While life was pleasant to thy un- 

dimmed sight. 
And, day by day, within thy spirit 

grew 
A holier hope than young Ambition 

knew, 
As through thy rural quiet, not in 

vain. 
Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's 

cry of pain, 
Man of the millions, thou art lost 

too soon ! 
Portents at which the bravest stand 

aghast, — 



THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE 



377 



I 



The birth-throes of a Future, strange 

and vast, 
Alarm the land; yet thou, so wise 

and strong, 
Suddenly summoned to the burial bed, 
Lapped in its slumbers deep and 

ever long, 
Hear'st not the tumult surging over- 
head. 
Who now shall rally Freedom's scat- 
tering host? 
Who wear the mantle of the leader 

lost ? 
Who stay the march of slavery ? He 

whose voice 
Hath called thee from thy task-field 

shall not lack 
Yet bolder champions, to beat 

bravely back 
The wrong which, through his poor 

ones, reaches Him: 
Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's 

torchlights trim, 
And wave them high across the 

abysmal black, 
Till bound, dumb millions there shall 

see them and rejoice. 



THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE 

Beams of noon, like burning lances, 
through the tree-tops flash and 
glisten. 

As she stands before her lover, with 
raised face to look and listen. 

Dark, but comely, like the maiden in 
the ancient Jewish song: 

Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done 
her graceful beauty wrong. 

He, the strong one and the manly, 
with the vassal's garb and hue, 

Holding still his spirit's birthright, to 
his higher nature true; 

Hiding deep the strengthening pur- 
pose of a freeman in his heart, 

As the gregree holds his Fetich from 
the white man's gaze apart. 

Ever foremost of his comrades, when 
the driver's morning horn 

Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the 
fields of cane and corn: 1° 



Fall the keen and burning lashes never 

on his back or limb; 
Scarce with look or word of censure, 

turns the driver unto him. 

Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, 
and his eye is hard and stern; 

Slavery's last and humblest lesson he 
has never deigned to learn. 

And, at evening, when his comrades 
dance before their master's 
door. 

Folding arms and knitting forehead, 
stands he silent evermore. 

God be praised for every instinct 
which rebels against a lot 

Where the brute survives tiie human, 
and man's upright form is 
not! 

As the serpent-like bejuco winds his 

spiral fold on fold 
Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it 

withers in his hold; 20 

Slow decays the forest monarch, closer 
girds the fell embrace, 

Till the tree is seen no longer, and the 
vine is in its place; 

So a base and bestial nature round the 
vassal's manhood twines, 

And the spirit wastes beneath it. like 
the ceiba choked with vines. 

God is Love, saith the Evangel; and 
our world of woe and sin 

Is made light and happy only when a 
Love is shining in. 

Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, 
finding, wheresoe'er ye roam, 

Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, 
making all the world like home; 

In the veins of whose aff"ections kin- 
dred blood is but a part 

Of one kindly current tiirobbing from 
the universal heart; 30 

Can ye know the deeper meaning of a 
love in Slaverv luirsed. 

Last flower of a lost I'den. blooming in 
that Soil accursed ? 



378 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Love of Home, and Love of Woman ! 

— dear to all, but doubly dear 
To the heart whose pulses elsewhere 

measure only hate and fear. 

All around the desert circles, under- 
neath a brazen sky. 

Only one green spot remaining where 
the dew is never dry ! 

From the horror of that desert, from 
its atmosphere of hell. 

Turns the fainting spirit thither, as 
the diver seeks his bell. 

T is the fervid tropic noontime; faint 
and low the sea- waves beat; 

Hazy rise the inland mountains 
through the glimmer of the 
heat, — 40 

Where, through mingled leaves and 
blossoms, arrowy sunbeams 
flash and glisten, 

Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and 
she lifts her head to listen : — 

"We shall live as slaves no longer! 

Freedom's hour is close at hand ! 
Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests 

the boat upon the strand ! 

*'I have seen the Haytien Captain; I 
have seen his swarthy crew, 

Haters of the pallid faces, to their race 
aod color true. 

"They have sworn to wait our coming 
till the night has passed its noon, 

And the gray and darkening waters 
roll above the sunken moon ! " 

Oh, the blessed hope of freedom ! how 
witli joy and glad surprise. 

For an instant tlirobs her bosom, for 
an instant beam her eyes ! 50 

But she looks across the valley, where 
her mother's hut is seen, 

Through the snowy bloom of coffee, 
and the lemon-leaves so green. 

And she answers, sad and earnest: " It 
were wrong for thee to stay : 

God hath heard thy pray erf or freedom, 
and His finger points the way. 



" Well I know with what endurance, 
for the sake of me and mine. 

Thou hast borne too long a burden 
never meant for souls like thine. 

"Go; and at the hour of midnight, 
when our last farewell is o'er, 

Kneeling on our place of parting, I 
will bless thee from the shore. 

" But for me, my mother, lying on her 
sick-bed all the day, 

Lifts her weary head to watch me, 
coming through the twilight 
gray. 60 

" Should I leave her sick and helpless, 
even freedom, shared with thee, 

Would be sadder far than bondage, 
lonely toil, and stripes to me. 

"For my heart would die within me, 

and my brain would soon be 

wild; 
I should hear my mother calling 

through the twilight for her 

child!" 

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines 
the sun of morning-time, * 

Through the coffee-trees in blossom, 
and green hedges of the lime. 

Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, 
toil the lover and the maid; 

Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, 
leaning forward on his spade? 

Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he: 't is 
the Haytien's sail he sees. 

Like a white cloud of the mountains, 
driven seaward by the breeze ! 

But his arm a light hand presses, and 
he hears a low voice call: 71 

Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, 
Love is mightier than all. 



THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER- 
BREAKERS 

In Westminster's royal halls, 
Robed in their pontificals, 
England's ancient prelates stood 
For the people's right and good. 



THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER-BREAKERS 



379 



Closed around the waiting crowd, 
Dark and still, like winter's cloud; 
King and council, lord and knight, 
Squire and yeoman, stood in sight; 

Stood to hear the priest rehearse, 
In God's name, the Church's curse, lo 
By the tapers round them lit. 
Slowly, sternly uttering it. 



Silent, while that curse was said, 
Every bare and listening licad 
Bowed in reverent awe, and tlien 
All the people said, Amen ! 

Seven times the bells have tolled, 
For the centuries gray and old. 
Since that stoled and mitred band 
Cursed the tvrants of tlieir land. 




The Great Hall of Westminster 



" Right of voice in framing laws, 
Right of peers to try each cause; 
Peasant homestead, mean and 

small, 
Sacred as the monarch's hall, — 

" Whoso lays his hand on these, 
England's ancient Hberties; 
Whoso breaks, by word or deed, 
England's vow at Runny mede; 20 

" Be he Prince or belted knight, 
Whatsoe'er his rank or might, 
If the highest, then the worst. 
Let him live and die accursed. 

"Thou, who to Thy Church hast 

given 
Keys alike of hell and heaven, 
Make our word and witness sure. 
Let the curse we speak endure!" 



Since the priesthood, like a tower, 
Stood between the poor and power; 
And the wronged and trodden 

down 
Blessed the abbot's shaven cro^^T^. 40 

Gone, thank God, their wizard spell. 
Lost their keys of heaven and 

hell; 
Yet I sigh for men as bold 
As those bearded priests of old. 

Now too oft the priesthood wait 
At the threshold of the state; 
Waiting for the beck and nod 
Of its power as law and God. 

Fraud exults, while solemn words 
Sanctifv his stolen hoards; 50 

Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips 
Bless his manacles and whips. 



38o 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Not on them the poor rely, 
Not to tlieni looks liberty, 
Who with fawnini!; falseiiood cower 
To the wrong, when clothed with 
power. 

Oh, to see them meanly cling, 
Round the master, round the king, 
Sported with, and sold and bought, — 
Pitifuller sight is not ! 60 

Tell me not that this must be: 
God's true priest is always free; 
Free ti»e needed trutii to speak. 
Right the wronged, and raise the 
weak. 

Not to fawn on wealtli and state. 
Leaving Lazarus at the gate; 
Not to peddle creeds like wares; 
Not to mutter hirehng prayers; 

Nor to paint the new life's bliss 
On tlie sable grovmd of this; 70 

Golden streets for idle knave. 
Sabbath rest for weary slave ! 

Not for words and works like these. 
Priest of God, thy mission is; 
15ut to make earth's desert glad. 
In its Eden greenness clad; 

And to level manhood bring 

Lord and peasant, serf and king; 

And the Christ of God to find 

In the humblest of thy kind ! 80 

Thine to work as well as pray, 
Clearing thorny wrongs away; 
Plucking up the weeds of sin. 
Letting heaven's warm sunshine in ; 

Watching on the hills of Faith; 
Listening wliat the spirit saith, 
(.)f the dim-seen light afar, 
Growing like a nearing star. 

God's interpreter art tliou 
To the waiting ones below; 90 

'Twixt them and its light midway 
H(>ralding the better day; 

Catcliing gleams of temple spires. 
Hearing notes of angel choirs, 
VVhore, :us yet unseen of them. 
Comes the New Jerusalem I 



Like the seer of Patmos gazing, 
On the glory downward blazing; 
Till upon Earth's grateful sod 
Rests the City of our God ! 



PvEAN 

1848 

Now, joy and thanks forevermore ! 

The dreary night has wellnigh 
passed. 
The slumbers of the North are o'er, 

The Giant stands erect at last ! 

More than we hoped in that dark time 
When, faint with watching, few and 
worn, 

We saw no welcome day-star climb 
The cold gray pathway of the morn ! 

O weary hours ! O night of years ! 

What storms our darkling pathway 

swept, 10 

Where, beating back our thronging 

fears, 

By Faith alone our march we kept. 

How jeered the scoffing crowd behind, 
How mocked before the tyrant train, 

As, one by one, the true and kind 
Fell fainting in our path of pain ! 

They died, their brave hearts breaking 
slow, 
But, self-forgetful to the last. 
In words of cheer and bugle blow 
Their breath upon the darkness 
passed. 20 

A mighty host, on either hand, 
Stood waiting for the dawn of day 

To crush like reeds our feeble band; 
The morn has come, and where are 
they ? 

Troop after troop their line forsakes; 
With peace-white banners waving 
free, 
And from our own the glad shout 
breaks. 
Of Freedom and Fraternity ! 

Like mist before the growing light, 
The hostile cohorts melt away; 30 



THE CRISIS 



381 



Our frowning foemen of the nij2;ht 
Are brothers at the dawn of day ! 

As unto these repentant ones 

We open wide our toil-worn ranks, 

Along our line a murmur runs 

Of song, and praise, and grateful 
thanks. 

Sound for the onset ! Blast on blast ! 

Till Slavery's minions cower and 

quail ; 

One charge of fire shall drive them fast 

Like chaff before our Northern 

gale ! 40 

O prisoners in your house of pain. 
Dumb, toiling millions, bound and 
sold, 
Look! stretched o'er Southern vale 
and plain, 
The Lord's delivering hand behold ! 

Above the tyrant's pride of power. 
His iron gates and guarded wall, 

The bolts which shattered Shinar's 
tower 
Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall. 

Awake ! awake ! my Fatherland ! 

It is thy Northern light that 

shines; 50 

This stirring march of Freedom's band 

The storm-song of thy mountain 

pines. 

Wake, dwellers where the day expires ! 

And hear, in winds that sweep your 
lakes 
And fan your prairies' roaring fires, 

The signal-call that Freedom makes! 



THE CRISIS 

WRITTEN ON LEARNING THE TERMS 
OF THE TREATY WITH MEXICO 

Across the Stony Mountains, o'er the 

desert's drouth and sand, 
The circles of our empire touch the 

western ocean's strand; 
From slumberous Timpanogos, to 

Gila, wild and free, 
Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to 

California's sea; 



And from the mountains of the east, to 

Santa Rosa's shore, 
The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air 

no more. 

O Vale of Rio Bravo ! Let thy simple 

children weep; 
Close watch about their holy fire let 

maids of Pecos keep; 
Let Taos send her cry across Sierra 

Madre's pines. 
And Santa Barbara toll her bells 

amidst her com and vines; 10 
For lo ! the pale land-sockers come, 

with eager eyes of gain, 
Wide scattering, Hke the bi.son herds 

on broad Salada's plain. 

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed 

what sound the winds l)ring 

dowTi 
Of footsteps on the crisping snow, 

from cold Nevada's crown ! 
Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with 

rein of travel slack, 
And, bending o'er liis saddle, leaves 

the sunrise at his back; 
By many a lonely river, and gorge of 

fir and pine. 
On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly 

camp-fires siiine. 

O countrymen and brothers ' that land 
of lake and plain, 

Of salt wastes alternating with valleys 
fat with grain; ao 

Of mountains white with winter, look- 
ing downward, cold, .serene, 

C)n their feet with spring-vines tan- 
gled and lapped in softe.st 
green ; 

Swift through whose black volcanic 
gates, o'er many a sunny 
vale. 

Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the 
bison's dusty trail ! 

Great spaces yet untra veiled, great 

lakes wliose my.stic shores 
The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of 

Saxon oars; 
Great herds that wander all im- 

watched, wild .st;MMls that none 

have tamed. 
Strange fish in unknown .streams, ami 

birds the Saxon never named; 



o"- 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Deep mines, dark mountain crucil)les, 
where Nature's chemic pow- 
ers 

Work out tlie Great Designer's will; 
all these ye say are ours ! 30 

Forever ours ! for good or ill, on us the 

burden lies: 
God's balance, watched by angels, is 

hung across the skies. 
Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom 

turn the poised and trembling 

scale ? 
Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber 

Wrong pre\'ail ? 
Shall the broad land o'er which our 

flag in starry splendor waves, 
Forego through us its freedom, and 

bear the tread of slaves ? 

The day is breaking in the East of 

whicii the prophets told, 
And brightens up the sky of Time the 

Cin-istian Age of Gold; 
Old Might to Right is yielding, battle 

blade to clerkly pen, 
Earth's monarclis are her peoples, and 

her serfs stand up as men; 40 
The isles rejoice together, in a day are 

nations born, 
And the slave walks free in Tunis, and 

by Stamboul's Golden Horn ! 

Is this, O countrymen of mine ! a day 

for us to sow 
The soil of new-gained empire with 

slavery's seeds of woe ? 
To feed with our fresh life-blood the 

Old World's cast-off crime, 
Dropped, like some monstrous early 

birth, from the tired lap of 

Time ? 
To run anew tlie evil race the old lost 

nations ran, 
And die like them of unbelief of God, 

and wrong of man ? 

Great Heaven! Is this our mission? 

End in this the prayers and 

tears. 
The toil, the strife, the watchings of 

our younger, better vears ? 50 
Still as the Old World rolls in light, 

shall ours in shadow turn, 
A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, 

tiirough outer darkness borne ? 



Where the far nations looked for light, 
a blackness in the air ? 

Where for words of hope they listened, 
the long wail of despair? 

The Crisis presses on us; face to face 

with us it stands, 
With solemn lips of question, like the 

Sphinx in Egypt's sands ! 
This day w^e fashion Destiny, our web 

of Fate we spin; 
This day for all hereafter choose we 

holiness or sin; 
Even now from starry Gerizim, or 

Ebal's cloudy crown. 
We call the dews of blessing or the 

bolts of cursing down ! 60 

By all for which the martyrs bore their 

agony and shame; 
By all the warning words of truth with 

which the prophets came; 
By the Future which awaits us; by all 

the hopes which cast 
Their faint and trembling beams 

across the blackness of the Past; 
And by the blessed thought of Him 

who for Earth's freedom died, 
O my people ! O my brothers ! let us 

choose the righteous side. 

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful 

on his way; 
To wed Penobscot's waters to San 

Francisco's bay, 
To make the rugged places smooth, 

and sow the vales with grain; 
And bear, with Liberty and Law, the 

Bible in his train: 70 

The mighty West shall bless the East, 

and sea shall answer sea, 
And mountain unto mountain call. 

Praise God, for we are free 1 



LINES ON THE PORTRAIT OF 
A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER 

A MOONY breadth of virgin face. 

By thought un violated; 
A patient mouth, to take from scorn 

The hook wdth bank-notes baited ! 
Its self-complacent sleekness shows 

How thrift goes with the fawner; 
An imctuous unconcern of all 

Which nice folks call dishonor ! 



PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRATED PUBLISHER 



383 




Grace Greenwood 
" Alas ! a woman slew us ! " (See note p. 640.) 



A pleasant print to peddle out 

In lands of rice and cotton; 10 

The model of that face in dough 

Would make the artist's fortune. 
For Fame to thee has come un- 
sought, 

While others vainly woo her, 
In proof how mean a thing can make 

A great man of its doer. 

To whom shall men thyself compare. 

Since common models fail 'em. 
Save classic goose of ancient Rome, 

Or sacred ass of Balaam ? 20 

The gabble of that wakeful goose 

Saved Rome from sack of Brennus; 
The braying of the prophet's ass 

Betrayed the angel's menace ! 



So when Guy Fawkes, in petticoats, 

And azure-tinted hose on, 
Was twisting from thy love-lorn sheets 

The slow-match of explosion — 
An earthquake blast that would have 
tossed 

The I'^nion as a feather, so 

Thy instinct saved a perilled land 

And perilled pur.se togetlier. 

Just think of Carolina's sage 

Sent whirling like a Dervis, 
Of Quattlebuni in middle air 

Performing strange drill-service! 
Doomed like As.syria's lord of old, 

Who fell before the Jewess, 
Or sad Abimelech, to sigh, 

"Alas! a woman slew us ! " 40 



3^4 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Thou saw'st beneath a fair disguise 

The danger darkly hirking, 
And maiden bodice dreaded more 

Than warrior's steel- wrought jer- 
kin. 
How keen to scent the hidden plot ! 

How prompt wert thou to balk it, 
With patriot zeal and pedler thrift, 

For country and for pocket ! 

Thy likeness here is doubtless well, 

But higher honor's due it; so 

On auction-block and negro-jail 

Admiring eyes should view it. 
Or, hung aloft, it well might grace 

The nation's senate-chamber — 
A greedy Northern bottle-fly 

Preserved in Slavery's amber ! 



DERNE 

Night on the city of the Moor ! 
On mosque and tomb, and white- 
walled shore. 
On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless 

knock 
The narrow harbor-gates unlock, 
On corsair's galley, carack tall, 
And plundered Christian caraval ! 
The sounds of Moslem life are still; 
No mule-bell tinkles down the hill; 
Stretched in the broad court of the 

khan, 
The dusty Borntou caravan lo 

Lies heaped in slumber, beast and 

man; 
The Sheik is dreaming in his tent, 
His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent; 
Tlie kiosk's glimmering lights are gone, 
The merchant with his wares with- 
drawn ; 
Hougli pillowed on some pirate breast. 
The dancing-girl has sunk to rest; 
And, save where measured footsteps 

fall 
Along the Bashaw's guarded wall. 
Or where, like some bad dream, the 

Jew 
Creeps stealthily his quarter through, 
Or counts with fear his golden heaps, ' 
The City of the Corsair sleeps ! 

But where yon prison long and low 
Stands black against the pale star- 
glow, 



Chafed by the ceaseless wash of 

waves, 
There watch and pine the Christian 

slaves; 
Rough-bearded men, whose far-off 

wives 
Wear out with grief their lonely lives; 
And youth, still flashing from his 

eyes 30 

The clear blue of New England skies, 
A treasured lock of whose soft hair 
Now wakes some sorrowing mother's 

prayer; 
Or, worn upon some maiden breast, 
Stirs with the loving heart's unrest ! 

A bitter cup each life must drain. 
The groaning earth is cursed with 

pain. 
And, like the scroll the angel bore 
The shuddering Hebrew seer before, 
O'erwrit alike, without, within, 40 
With all the woes which follow sin; 
But, bitterest of the ills beneath 
Whose load man totters down to 

death. 
Is that which plucks the regal crown 
Of Freedom from his forehead down, 
And snatches from his powerless hand 
The sceptred sign of self-command, 
Effacing with the chain and rod 
The image and the seal of God; 
Till from his nature, day by day, so 
The manly virtues fall away. 
And leave him naked, blind and mute. 
The godlike merging in the brute ! 

Why mourn the quiet ones who die 
Beneath affection's tender eye, 
Unto their household and their kin 
Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered 

in? 
O weeper, from that tranquil sod. 
That holy harvest-home of God, 
Turn to the quick and suffering, shed 
Thy tears upon the living dead ! 61 
Thank God above thy dear ones' 

graves, 
They sleep with Him, they are not 

slaves. 

What dark mass, down the mountain- 
sides 
Swift-pouring, like a stream divides? 
A long, loose, straggling caravan, 
Camel and horse and armed man. 



A SABBATH SCENE 



38s 



The moon's low crescent, glimmerine 

o'er 
Its grave of waters to the shore, 
Lights up that mountain cavalcade. 
And gleams from gun and spear and 

blade ^ ^ 

Near and more near ! now o'er them 

falls 
The shadow of the city walls. 
Hark to the sentry's challenge, 

drowned 
In the fierce trumpet's charging 

sound ! 
The rush of men, the musket's peal. 
The short, sharp clang of meeting 

steel I 

Vain, Moslem, vain thy lifeblood 

poured 
So freely on thy foeman's sword! 
Not to the swift nor to the strong 80 
The battles of the right belong; 
For he who strikes for Freedom wears 
The armor of the captive's prayers, 
And Nature profTers to his cause 
The strength of her eternal laws; 
While he whose arm essays to bind 
And herd with common brutes his 

kind 
Strives evermore at fearful odds 
With Nature and the jealous gods, 
And dares the dread recoil which late 
Or soon their right shall vindicate. 91 

'T is done, the horned crescent falls ! 
The star-flag flouts the broken walls ! 
Joy to the captive husband ! joy 
To thy sick heart, O brown-locked boy ! 
In sullen wrath the conquered Moor 
Wide open flings your dungeon-door. 
And leaves ye free from cell and chain. 
The owners of yourselves again. 
Dark as his allies desert-born, 100 

Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn 
With the long marches of his band 
Through hottest wastes of rock and 

sand. 
Scorched by the sun and furnace- 
breath 
Of the red desert's wind of death. 
With welcome words and grasping 

hands, 
The victor and deliverer stands ! 

The tale is one of distant skies; 
The dust of half a century lies 



^P?^.'*; yet its hero's name 
Still Imgers on the lips of Fame 
Men speak the praise of him who gave 
Deliverance to the Moorman's slave 
1 et dare to brand with shame and 

crime 
The heroes of our land and time — 
The self-forgetful ones, who stake 
Home, name, and life for Freedom's 

sake. 
God mend his heart who cannot feel 
Tlie impulse of a holy zeal. 
And sees not, with his sordid eyes, 120 
The beauty of self-sacrifice ! 
Though in the sacred place he stands, 
Uplifting consecrated hands, 
Unworthy are his lips to tell 
Of Jesus' martyr-miracle, 
Or name aright that dread embrace 
Of suffering for a fallen race ! 

A SABBATH SCENE 

Scarce had the solemn Sabbath-bell 
Ceased quivering in the steeple. 

Scarce had the parson to his desk 
Walked stately through his people. 

When down the summer-shaded street 

A wasted female figure, 
With dusky brow and naked feet, 

Came rushing wild and eager. 

She saw the white spire through the 
trees, 
She heard the sweet hymn swell- 
ing: 10 
O pitying Christ ! a refuge give 
That poor one in Thy dwelling ! 

Like a scared fawn before the hounds. 
Right up the aisle she glided. 

While close behind lier, whip in hand. 
A lank-haired hunter strided. 

She raised a keen and bitter cry. 
To Heaven and Earth appealing; 

Were manhood's generous pulses 
dead ? 
Had woman's heart no feeling ? ao 

A score of stout hands rose l)etween 

The hunter and the flving: 
Age clenched hisstulT, and maiden eyes 

Flashed tearful, yet defying. 



386 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



"Who dares profane this house and 
day?" 
Cried out the angry pastor. 
"Why, bless your soul, the wench's a 
slave, 
And I 'm her lord and master ! 

" I 've law and gospel on my side. 
And who shall dare refuse me ?" 30 

Down came the parson, bowing low, 
" My good sir, pray excuse me ! 

" Of course I know your right divine 
To own and work and whip her; 

Quick, deacon, throw that Polyglott 
Before the wench, and trip her!" 

Plump dropped the holy tome, and 
o'er 
Its sacred pages stumbling, 
Bound hand and foot, a slave once 
more. 
The hapless wretch lay trembling. 40 

I saw the parson tie the knots. 
The while liis flock addressing. 

The Scriptural claims of slavery 
With text on text impressing. 

"Although," said he, "on Sabbath 
day 

All secular occupations 
Are deadly sins, we must fulfil 

Our moral obligations: 

" And this commends itself as one 
To every conscience tender; so 

As Paul sent back Onesimus, 

My Christian friends, we send her ! " 

Shriek rose on shriek, — the Sabbath 
air 

Her wild cries tore asunder; 
I Ustened, with hushed breath, to hear 

God answering with his thunder ! 

All still ! the very altar's cloth 

Had smothered down her shrieking. 

And, dumb, she turned from face to 
face. 
For human pity seeking ! 60 

I saw her dragged along the aisle, 
Her sliackles harshly clanking; 

I heard the parson, over all, 
The Lord devoutly thanking 1 



My brain took fire: "Is this, " I 
cried, 
"The end of prayer and preach- 
ing? 
Then down with pulpit, down with 
priest. 
And give us Nature's teaching ! 

"Foul shame and scorn be on ye 
all 

Who turn the good to evil, 70 

And steal the Bible from the Lord, 

To give it to the Devil ! 

"Than garbled text or parchment 
law 

I own a statute higher; 
And God is true, though every book 

And every man's a liar!" 

Just then I felt the deacon's hand 
In wrath my coat-tail seize on; 

I heard the priest cry, " Infidel ! " 
The lawyer mutter, " Treason ! " 80 

I started up, — where now were 
church, 

Slave, master, priest, and people ? 
I only heard the supper-bell, 

Instead of clanging steeple. 

But, on the open window's sill. 

O'er which the white blooms drifted, 

The pages of a good old Book 
The wind of summer lifted, 

And flower and vine, like angel wings 
Around the Holy Mother, 90 

Waved softly there, as if God's truth 
And Mercy kissed each other. 

And freely from the cherry-bough 
Above the casement swinging. 

With golden bosom to the sun, 
The oriole was singing. 

As bird and flower made plain of old 

The lesson of the Teacher, 
So now I heard the written Word 

Interpreted by Nature ! 100 

For to my ear methought the breeze 
Bore Freedom's blessed word on; 

Thus saith the Lord: Break every 
yoke. 
Undo the heavy burden ! 



MOLOCH IN STATE STREET 



387 



I 



IN THE EVIL DAYS 
1850 

The evil days have come, the poor 

Are made a prey; 
Bar up the hospitable door, 
Put out the fire-Hglits, point no more 

The wanderer's way. 

For Pity now is crime; the chain 

Which binds our States 
Is melted at her hearth in twain. 
Is rusted by her tears' soft rain: 

Close up her gates. 10 

Our Union, like a glacier stirred 

By voice below. 
Or bell of kine, or wing of bird, 
A beggar's crust, a kindly word 

May overthrow ! 

Poor, whispering tremblers! yet we 
boast 
Our blood and name; 
Bursting its century-bolted frost, 
Each gray cairn on the Northman's 
coast 
Cries out for shame ! 20 

Oh for the open firmament, 

The prairie free, 
The desert hillside, cavern-rent, 
The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent, 

The Bushman's tree ! 

Than web of Persian loom most 
rare. 
Or soft divan. 
Better the rough rock, bleak and 

bare. 
Or hollow tree, which man may share 
With suffering man. 30 

I hear a voice: "Thus saith the Law, 

Let Love be dumb; 
Clasping her liberal hands in awe. 
Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw 

From hearth and home." 

I hear another voice: "The poor 

Are thine to feed; 
Turn not the outcast from thy door. 
Nor give to bonds and wrong once 
more 

Whom God hath freed." 40 



Dear Lord! between that law and 
Thee 

No choice remains; 
Yet not untrue to man's decree. 
Though spurning its rewards, is' lie 

Who bears its pains. 

Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast 

And threatening word; 
I read the lesson of the Past, 
Tliat firm endurance wins at last 

More than the sword. so 

O clear-eyed Faith, and Patience thou 

So calm and strong ! 
Lend strength to weakness, teach us 

how 
The sleepless eyes of God look through 

This night of wrong I 



MOLOCH IN STATE STREET 

The moon has set : while yet the dawn 

Breaks cold and gray. 
Between the midnight and the mom 

Bear off your prey ! 

On, swift and still! the conscious 
street 

Is panged and stirred; 
Tread light ! that fall of serried feet 

The dead have heard ! 

The first drawn blood of Freedom's 
veins 
Gushed where ye tread; 10 

Lo! through the dusk the martyr- 
stains 
Blush darkly red ! 

Beneath the slowly-waning stars 

And whitening day. 
What stern and awful presence bars 

That sacred way ? 

What faces frown upon ye, dark 

With shame and pain ? 
Come these from Plymouth's Pilgrim 
bark ? 

Is that young Vane ? »o 

Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on 

With mocking cheer? 
Lo ! spectral Andros, Hutchinson, 

And Gage are here ! 



388 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 




state Street about 1840 



For ready mart of favoring blast 

Through Moloch's fire, 
Flesh of his flesh, unsparing, passed 

The Tyrian sire. 

Ye make that ancient sacrifice 

Of Man to Gain, 30 

Your traffic thrives, where Freedom 
dies. 
Beneath the chain. 

Ye sow to-day; your harvest, scorn 

And hate, is near; 
How think ye freemen , mountain- born , 

The tale will hear ? 

Thank God ! our mother State can yet 

Her fame retrieve; 
To yo\i and to your children let 

The scandal cleave. 40 

Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press, 
Make gods of gold; 



Let honor, truth, and manliness 
Like wares be sold. 

Your hoards are great, your walls are 
strong. 

But God is just; 
The gilded chambers built by wrong 

Invite the rust. 

What ! know ye not the gains of Crime 
Are dust and dross; 50 

Its ventures on the waves of time 
Foredoomed to loss ! 

And still the Pilgrim State remains 

What she hath been; 
Her inland hills, her seaw^ard plains, 

Still nurture men ! 

Nor wholly lost the fallen mart; 

Her olden blood 
Through many a free and generous heart 

Still pours its flood. 60 



THE RENDITION 



389 



That brave old blood, quick-flowing 

yet, 

Shall know no check, 
Till a free people's foot is set 
On Slavery's neck. 

Even now, the peal of bell and gun, 

And hills aflame, 
Tell of the first great triumph won 

In Freedom's name. 

The long night dies : the welcome 
gray 
Of dawn we see; 70 

Speed up the heavens thy perfect day, 
God of the free ! 
1851 



OFFICIAL PIETY 

SUGGESTED BY READING A STATE PA- 
PER, W^HEREIN THE HIGHER LAW IS 
INVOKED TO SUSTAIN THE LOWER 
ONE 

A PIOUS magistrate ! sound his praise 

throughout 
The wondering churches. Who shall 
henceforth doubt 
That the long-wished millennium 
draweth nigh ? 
Sin in high places has become de- 
vout, 
Tithes mint, goes painful-faced, and 

prays its lie 
Straight up to Heaven, and calls it 
piety ! 

The pirate, watching from his bloody 

deck 
The weltering galleon, heavy with 

the gold 
Of Acapulco, holding death in check 
While prayers are said, brows 

crossed, and beads are told; 
The robber, kneeling where the way- 
side cross 
On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread 

loss 
From his own carbine, glancing still 

abroad 
For some new victim, offering thanks 

to God ! 
Rome, listening at her altars to the 

cry 



Of midnight Murder, while her hound.s 
of hell 

Scour France, from baptized cannon 
and holy bell 
And thousand-throated priesthood, 

loud and high, 
Pealing Te Deums to the shudder- 
ing sky, 
"Thanks to the Lord, who givetii 
victory !" 

What prove these, but that crime was 
ne'er so black 

As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to 
lack ? 

Satan is modest. At Heaven's door lie 
lays 

His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural 
phrase 

And saintly posture, gives to God the 
praise 

And honor of the monstrous pro- 
geny. 

What marvel, then, in our own time 
to see 

His old devices, smootldy acted 
o'er, — 

Official piety, locking fast the door 

Of Hope against three million souls of 
inen, — 

Brothers, God's children, Christ's re- 
deemed, — and then, 

With uprolled eyeballs and on bended 
knee. 

Whining a prayer for help to hide the 
key! 



THE RENDITION 

I HEARD the train's shrill whistle call, 
I saw an earnest look beseech, 
And rather by that look than 
speech 

My neiglil)or told me all. 

And, as I thought of Liberty 

Marched haudculTcd down that 

s worded street, 
The solid earth beneath my feet 

Reeled fluid as tiie sea. 

I felt a sense of bitter loss, — 

Shame, tearless grief, and stifling 

wratli. 
And loathing fear, as if my path 

A serpent stretched across. 



39° 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



All love of home, all pride of place, 
All f^eiuTous conlideuce and trust, 
Sank smothering in that deep dis- 
gust 

And anguish of disgrace. 

Down on niy native hills of June, 
And home's green quiet, hiding all, 
Fell sudden darkness like the fall 

Of midnight upon noon ! 

And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong, 
Blood-drunken, through the black- 
ness trod. 
Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God 

The blasphemy of wrong. 

" O Motlier, from thy memories proud. 
Thy old renown, dear Common- 
wealth, 
Lend this dead air a breeze of 
health, 
And smite with stars this cloud. 

" Mother of Freedom, wise and brave. 
Rise awful in thy strength," I said; 
Ah me ! I spake but to the dead; 

I stood upon her grave ! 
6th mo., 1854 



ARISEN AT LAST 

ON THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL TO PRO- 
TECT THE RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES OF 
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE AGAINST 
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT 

I SAID I stood upon thy grave. 

My Mother State, when last the 

moon 
Of blossoms clomb the skies of June, 

And, scattering ashes on my head, 
I wore, imdreaming of relief, 
The sackcloth of thy shame and 
grief. 

Again that moon of blossoms shines 
( )n leaf and flower and folded wing. 
And thou hast risen with the spring ! 

Once more thy strong maternal arms 
Are round about thy children 

flung, — 
A lioness that guards her young ! 



No threat is on thy closed lips, 
But in thine eye a power to smite 
The mad wolf backward from its 
light. 

Southward the baffled robber's track 
Henceforth runs only; hereaway, 
The fell lycanthrope finds no prey. 

Henceforth, within thy sacred gates, 
His first low howl shall downward 

draw 
The thunder of thy righteous law. 

Not mindless of thy trade and gain. 
But, acting on the wiser plan, 
Thou 'rt grown conservative of man. 

So shalt thou clothe with life the hope, 
Dream-painted on the sightless eyes 
Of him who sang of Paradise, — 

The vision of a Christian man, 
In virtue, as in stature great. 
Embodied in a Christian State. 

And thou, amidst thy sisterhood 
Forbearing long, yet standing fast, 
Shalt win their grateful thanks at 
last; 

When North and South shall strive no 
more, 
And all their feuds and fears be lost 
In Freedom's holy Pentecost. 



THE HASCHISH 

Of all that Orient lands can vaunt 
Of marvels with our own compet- 
ing. 
The strangest is the Haschish plant, 
And what will follow on its eat- 
ing. 

What pictures to the taster rise. 
Of Dervish or of Almeh dances ! 

Of Eblis, or of Paradise, 

Set all aglow with Houri glances ! 

The poppy visions of Cathay, 

The heavy beer-trance of the Sua- 
bian; lo 

The wizard lights and demon play 
Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian ! 



THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS 



391 



The Mollah and the Christian dog 
Change place in mad metempsy- 
chosis; 
The Muezzin chmbs the synagogue, 
The Rabbi shakes his beard at Mo- 
ses! 

The Arab by his desert well 

Sits choosing from some Caliph's 
daughters, 
And hears his single camel's bell 19 

Sound welcome to his regal quarters. 

The Koran's reader makes complaint 
Of Shitan dancing on and off it; 



Tlie man of peace, about whose dreams 
The sweet millennial angels chister, 

Tastes the mad weed, and plots and 
schemes, 
A raving Cuban filibuster ! 

The noisiest Democrat, with ease, 
It turns to Slavery's parish beadle; 

The shrewdest statesman eats and sees 

Due southward point the polar 

needle. 40 

The Judge partakes, and sits erelong 
Upon his bench a railing I )lackguard ; 
Decides off-hand that right is wrong, 




The Kansas Emigrants 



The robber offers alms, the saint 
Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the 
Prophet. 

Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes ; 

But we have one ordained to beat it. 
The Haschish of the West, which 
makes 

Or fools or knaves of all who eat it. 

The preacher eats, and straight ap- 



pears 
His Bible in a new translation ; 



30 



Its angels negro overseers, _ 

And Heaven itself a snug plantation ! 



And reads the ten commandments 
backward. 

O potent plant! so rare a taste 
Has never Turk or (lentoo gotten; 

The hempen Haschish of the I'.ast 
Is powerless to our \N'estern Cotton ! 

THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS 

We cross the prairie as of old 
The pilgrims crossed the sea. 

To make the West, as they the East, 
The iiomestead of tiie free 1 



392 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



We go to rear a wall of men 
On Freedom's soutliern line, 

And plant beside the cotton-tree 
The rugged Northern pine ! 

We 're flowing from our native hills 

As our free rivers flow: 
The blessing of our Mother-land 

Is on us as we go. 

We go to plant her common schools 

On distant prairie swells, 
And give the Sabbaths of the wild 

The music of her bells. 

Upbearing, like the Ark of old, 

The Bible in our van. 
We go to test the truth of God 

Against the fraud of man. 

No pause, nor rest, save where the 
streams 

That feed the Kansas run. 
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon 

Shall flout the setting sun ! 

We '11 tread the prairie as of old 
Our fathers sailed the sea. 

And make the West, as they the East, 
The homestead of the free ! 



FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE 

INSCRIBED TO FRIENDS UNDER ARREST 
FOR TREASON AGAINST THE SLAVE 
POWER 

The age is dull and mean. Men creep, 
Not walk; with blood too pale and 

tame 
To pay the debt they owe to shame; 
Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and 
sleep 
Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning 
want; 
Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep 
Six days to Mammon, one to Cant 

In such a time, give thanks to God, 
That somewhat of the holy rage 
With which the prophets in their 
age 

(^n all its decent seemings trod. 
Has sot your feet upon the lie, 

That man and ox and soul and clod 
Are market stock to sell and buy I 



The hot words from your lips, my own, 
To caution trained, might not repeat ; 
But if some tares among the wheat 
Of generous thought and deed were 
sown. 
No common wrong provoked your 
zeal; 
The silken gauntlet that is thrown 
In such a quarrel rings like steel. 

The brave old strife the fathers saw 
For Freedom calls for men again 
Like those who battled not in vain 

For England's Charter, Alfred's law; 
And right of speech and trial just 

Wage in your name their ancient war 
With venal courts and perjured 
trust. 

God's ways seem dark, but, soon or 
late, 
They touch the shining hills of day; 
The evil cannot brook delay. 
The good can well afford to wait. 
Give ermined knaves their hour of 
crime; 
Ye have the future grand and great, 
The safe appeal of Truth to Time ! 



LETTER 

FROM A MISSIONARY OF THE METHOD- 
IST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH, IN 
KANSAS, TO A DISTINGUISHED POLI- 
TICIAN 

Douglas Mission, August, 1854 

Last week — the Lord be praised 
for all His mercies 
To His unworthy servant ! — I arrived 
Safe at the Mission, via Westport, 

where 
I tarried over night, to aid in forming 
A Vigilance Committee, to send back, 
In shirts of tar, and feather-doublets 

quilted 
With forty stripes save one, all Yan- 
kee comers, 
Uncircumcised and Gentile, aliens 

from 
The Commonwealth of Israel, who de- 
spise 
The prize of the high calling of the 
saints, lo 



LETTER 



393 



Who plant amidst this heathen wilder- 
ness 

Pure gospel institutions, sanctified 

By patriarchal use. The meeting 
opened 

With prayer, as was most fitting. Half 
an hour, 

Or thereaway, I groaned, and strove, 
and wrestled, 

As Jacob did at Penuel, till the power 

Fell on the people, and they cried 
"Amen!" 

"Glory to God!" and stamped and 
clapped their hands; 

And the rough river boatmen wiped 
their eyes; 

"Go it, old hoss!" they cried, and 
cursed the niggers — 20 

Fulfilling thus the word of prophecy, 

"Cursed be Canaan." After prayer, 
the meeting 

Chose a committee — good and pious 
men — 

A Presbyterian Elder, Baptist deacon, 

A local preacher, three or four class- 
leaders. 

Anxious inquirers, and renewed back- 
sliders, 

A score in all — to watch the river 
ferry 

(As they of old did watch the fords of 
Jordan), 

And cut off all whose Yankee tongues 
refuse 

The Shibboleth of the Nebraska bill. 30 

And then, in answer to repeated calls, 

I gave a brief account of what I saw 

In Washington; and truly many 
hearts 

Rejoiced to know the President, and 
you 

And all the Cabinet regularly hear 

The gospel message of a Sunday morn- 
ing, 

Drinking with thirsty souls of the sm- 
cere 

Milk of the Word. Glory ! Amen, and 
Selah 1 

Here, at the Mission, all things have 
gone well: 
The brother who, throughout my ab- 
sence, acted 40 
As overseer, assures me that the crops 
Never were better. I have lost one 
negro, 



A first-rate liand, but obstinate and 
sullen. 

He ran away some time last spring, 
and liid 

In the river timber. There my Indian 
converts 

Found him, and treed and shot him. 
For the rest, 

The heatliens round about begin to 
feel 

The influence of our pious ministra- 
tions 

And works of love; and some of tliem 
already 

Have purchased negroes, and are set- 
tling down so 

As sober Christians! Bless the Lord 
for this ! 

I know it will rejoice you. You. I hoar, 

Are on the eve of visiting Chicago, 

To fight with the wild beasts of Eplie- 
sus. 

Long John, and Dutch Free-Soilers. 
May your arm 

Be clothed witli strength, and on your 
tongue be found 

The sweet oil of persuiision. So desires 

Your brother and co-laborer. Amen ! 

P. S. All's lost. Even while I write 

these lines. 
The Yankee abolitionists are coming 
Upon us like a flood — grim, .stalwart 

men, ^i 

Each face set like a flint of Plymouth 

Rock 
Against our institutions — staking out 
Their farm lots on the woodeil Waka- 

rusa. 
Or squatting by the mellow-bottomed 

Kansas ; 
The pioneers of mightier multitudes, 
The small rain-patter, ere the thunder 

shower 
Drowns the dry prairies. Hope from 

man is not. 
Oh, for a (piiet bcrtli at Washington, 
Snug naval ciiaplaincy, or clorksliip, 

where 7<> 

These rumors of free labor and free soil 
Might never meet nie more, lietter to 

be 
Door-keeper in the Wlute House, 

than to dwell 
Amidst tliese Yankee tents, that, 

whitening, show 



394 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



On tlie fjcreon prairie like a fleet be- 
calmed. 

Metliinks I hear a voice come up the 
river 

From those far bayous where the alli- 
gators 

Mount guard around the camping fili- 
busters : 

" Shake off the dust of Kansas. Turn 
to Cuba — 79 

(That golden orange just about to fall, 

O'er-ripe, into the Democratic lap); 

Keep pace with Providence, or, as we 
say, 

Manifest destiny. Go forth and follow 

The message of our gospel, thither 
borne 

Upon the point of Quitman's bowie 
knife. 

And the persuasive lips of Colt's re- 
volvers. 

There may'st thou, underneath thy 
vine and fig-tree, 

Watch thy increase of sugar cane and 
negroes. 

Calm as a patriarch in his eastern 
tent!" 

Amen: So mote it be. So prays your 
friend. 90 



BURIAL OF BARBER 

Bear him, comrades, to his grave; 
Never over one more brave 

Sluill the prairie grasses weep, 
In the ages yet to come. 
When the millions in our room, 

What we sow in tears, shall reap. 

Bear liim up the icy hill, 
With the Kansas, frozen still 

As liis noble heart, below, 
And the land he came to till 10 

Witii a freeman's thews and will. 

And liis poor hut roofed with 
snow ! 

One more look of tliat dead face, 
Of his murder's ghastly trace! 

One more kiss, O widowed one! 
Lay your left hands on his brow, 
Lift your rigiit hinids up, and vow 

That his work shall yet be done. 

Patience, friends ! The eye of God 



Every path by Murder trod 20 

Watches, lidless, day and night; 
And the dead man in his shroud. 
And his widow weeping loud, 
And our hearts, are in His sight. 

Every deadly threat that swells 
With the roar of gambling hells, 

Every brutal jest and jeer. 
Every wicked thought and plan 
Of the cruel heart of man. 

Thought but whispered. He can 
hear ! 30 

We in suffering, they in crime, 
Wait the just award of time. 

Wait the vengeance that is due; 
Not in vain a heart shall break, 
Not a tear for Freedom's sake 

Fall unheeded: God is true. 

While the flag with stars bedecked 
Threatens where it should protect, 

And the Law shakes hands with 
Crime, 
What is left us but to wait, 40 

Match our patience to our fate, 

And abide the better time ? 

Patience, friends ! The human heart 
Everywhere shall take our part. 

Everywhere for us shall pray; 
On our side are nature's laws, 
And God's life is in the cause 

That we suffer for to-day. 

Well to suffer is divine; 

Pass the watchword down the line, so 

Pass the countersign: "Endure." 
Not to him who rashly dares, 
But to him who nobly bears, 

Is the victor's garland sure. 

Frozen earth to frozen breast. 
Lay our slain one down to rest; 

Lay him down in hope and faith, 
And above the broken sod, 
Once again, to Freedom's God, 

Pledge ourselves for life or death, 60 

That the State whose walls we lay, 
In our blood and tears, to-day. 

Shall be free from bonds of shame, 
And our goodly land untrod 
liy the feet of Slavery, shod 

With cursing as with flame ! 



LE MARAIS DU CYGNE 



395 



Plant the Buckeye on his grave, 
For the hunter of the slave 

In its shadow cannot rest; 
And let martyr mound and tree 70 
Be our pledge and guaranty 

Of the freedom of the West ! 



TO PENNSYLVANIA 

O State prayer-founded ! never hung 
Such choice upon a people's tongue, 

Such power to bless or ban, 
As that which makes thy whisper 

Fate, 
For which on thee the centuries wait, 

And destinies of man ! 

Across thy Alleghanian chain, 
With groanings from a land in pain, 

The west-wind finds its way: 
Wild-wailing from Missouri's flood 
The crying of thy children's blood 

Is in thy ears to-day ! 

And unto thee in Freedom's hour 
Of sorest need God gives the power 

To ruin or to save; 
To wound or heal, to lilight or bless 
With fertile field or wilderness, 

A free home or a grave ! 

Then let thy virtue match the crime, 
Rise to a level with the time; 

And, if a son of thine 
Betray or tempt thee, Brutus-like 
For Fatherland and Freedom strike 

As Justice gives the sign. 

Wake, sleeper, from thy dream of ease. 
The great occasion's forelock seize; 

And let the north-wind strong. 
And golden leaves of autumn, be 
Thy coronal of Victory 

And thy triumphal song. 
10th mo., 1856 



LE MARAIS DU CYGNE 

A BLUSH as of roses 

Where rose never grew ! 

Great drops on the bunch-grass, 
But not of the dew ! 

A taint in the sweet air 
For wild bees to shun ! 



A stain that shall never 
Bleach out in the sun ! 

Back, steed of the prairies! 

Sweet song-bird, fly back ! 10 

Wheel hither, bald vulture! 

Gray wolf, call thy pack ! 
The foul human vultures 

Have feasted and fled; 
The wolves of the Border 

Have crept from the dead. 

From the hearths of their cabins, 

The fields of their corn. 
Unwarned and unweaponed, 

The victims were torn, — 20 

By the whirlwind of nuirder 

Swooped up antl swept on 
To the low, reedy fen-lands, 

The Marsh of ithe Swan. 

With a vain plea for mercy 

No stout knee was crooked; 
In the mouths of the rifles 

Right manly they looked. 
How paled the May sunshine, 

O Marais du Cygne ! 30 

On death for the strong life, 

On red grass for green ! 

In the homes of their rearing. 

Yet warm with their lives, 
Ye wait the dead only, 

Poor children and wives ! 
Put out the red forge-fire, 

The smith shall not come; 
Unyoke the brown oxoii, 

The ploughman lies dumb 40 

Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh, 

O dreary death-train, 
With pressed lips as bloodless 

As lips of the slain ! 
Kiss down the young eyelids. 

Smootli down the gray hairs; 
Let tears (luench the curses 
That l)urn through your prayers. 



Strong man of the prairies, 

Mourn l)itter and wild! 
Wail, desolate woman! 

Weep, fatherless ciiild! 
But the grain of God springs up 

From ashes beneath, 
And the crown of his harvest 

Is life out of death. 



50 



39 <^ 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



60 



70 



Not in vain on the dial 

The sluide moves along, 
To point the great contrasts 

Of right and of wrong: 
Free homes and free altars, 

Free prairie and flood, — 
The reeds of the Swan's Marsh, 

Whose bloom is of blood ! 

On the lintels of Kansas 

That blood shall not dry; 
Henceforth the Bad Angel 

Shall harmless go by; 
Henceforth to the sunset, 

Unchecked on her way. 
Shall Liberty follow 

The march of the day. 



THE PASS OF THE SIERRA 

All night above their rocky bed 
They saw the stars march slow; 

The wild Sierra overhead, 
The desert's death below. 

The Indian from his lodge of bark. 
The gray bear from his den. 

Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark. 
Glared on the mountain men. 

Still upward turned, with anxious 
strain, 

Their leader's sleepless eye, 10 

Where splinters of the mountain chain 

Stood black against the sky. 

The night waned slow: at last, a glow, 

A gleam of sudden fire, 
Shot up behind the walls of snow. 

And tipped each icy spire. 

" Up, men ! " he cried, " yon rocky cone, 
To-day, please God, we'll pass. 

And look from Winter's frozen throne 
On Summer's flowers and grass ! " 20 

They set their faces to the blast, 
They trod the eternal snow. 

And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at 
last 
The promised land below. 

Behind, they saw the snow-cloud 
tossed 
By many an icy horn; 



Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed, 
And green with vines and corn. 

They left the Winter at their backs 
To flap his baffled wing, 30 

And downward, with the cataracts, 
Leaped to the lap of Spring. 

Strong leader of that mountain band, 

Another task remains, 
To break from Slavery's desert land 

A path to Freedom's plains. 

The winds are wild, the way is drear, 
Yet, flashing through the night, 

Lo ! icy ridge and rocky spear 

Blaze out in morning light ! 40 

Rise up, Fremont, and go before; 

The Hour must have its Man; 
Put on the hunting-shirt once more, 

And lead in Freedom's van ! 
8th mo., 1856 

A SONG FOR THE TIME 

Up, laggards of Freedom ! — our free 

flag is cast 
To the blaze of the sun and the wings 

of the blast; 
Will ye turn from a struggle so bravely 

begun, 
From a foe that is breaking, a field 

that 's half won ? 

Whoso loves not his kind, and who 
fears not the Lord, 

Let him join that foe's service, ac- 
cursed and abhorred ! 

Let him do his base will, as the slave 
only can, — 

Let him put on the bloodhound, and 
put off the Man ! 

Let him go where the cold blood that 
creeps in his veins 

Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on 
his chains; 

Where the black slave shall laugh in 
his bonds, to behold 

The White Slave beside him, self-fet- 
tered and sold ! 

But ye, who still boast of hearts beat- 
ing and warm, 



A SONG 



397 



Rise, from lake shore and ocean's, like 

waves in a storm, 
Come, throng round our banner in 

Liberty's name, 
Like winds from your mountains, like 

prairies aflame ! 

Our foe, hidden long in his ambush of 

night, 
Now, forced from his covert, stands 

black in the light. 
Oh, the cruel to Man, and the hateful 

to God, 
Smite him down to the earth, that is 

cursed where he trod ! 

For deeper than thunder of summer's 
loud shower. 

On the dome of the sky God is strik- 
ing the hour ! 

Shall we falter before what we've 
prayed for so long. 

When the Wrong is so weak, and the 
Right is so strong? 

Come forth all together! come old 
and come young. 

Freedom's vote in each hand, and her 
song on each tongue; 

Truth naked is stronger than False- 
hood in mail; 

The Wrong cannot prosper, the Right 
cannot fail ! 

Like leaves of the summer once num- 
bered the foe. 

But the hoar-frost is falling, the north- 
ern winds blow; 

Like leaves of November erelong shall 
they fall, 

For earth wearies of them and God's 
over all ! 



WHAT OF THE DAY? 

A SOUND of tumult troubles all the air. 
Like the low thunders of a sultry sky 
Far-rolling ere the downright light- 
nings glare; 
The hills blaze red with warnings; 

foes draw nigh. 
Treading the dark with challenge 
and reply. 
Behold the burden of the prophet's 
vision: 



The gathering hosts, — the Valley of 
Decision, 
Dusk with tiie wings of eagles 
wlieeling o'er. 
Day of tlie Lord, of darkness and not 
light ! 
It breaks in thunder and the whirl- 
wind's roar ! 
Even so, Father ! Let Thy will be done; 
Turn and o'erturn, end what Thou 

hast begun 
In judgment or in mercy: as for 

me. 
If but the least and frailest, let me be 
Evermore numbered with the truly 

free 
Who find Thy service perfect liberty ! 
I fain would thank Thee that my 
mortal life 
Has reached the hour (albeit 
through care and pain) 
When Good and Evil, as for final 
strife. 
Close dim and vast on Armaged- 
don's plain; 
And Michael and his angels once again 
Drive howling back the Spirits of 
the Night. 
Oh for the faith to read the signs 

aright 
And, from tlie angle of Thy perfect 
sight. 
See Truth's white banner floating 

on before; 
And the Good Cause, despite of 

venal friends, 
And base expedients, move to noble 

ends; 
See Peace with Freedom make to 
Time amends. 
And, through its cloud of dust, the 
tlireshing-floor, 
Flailed by the thunder, heaped 

with chaffless grain ! 
1857 

A SONG 

INSCRIBED TO THE FREMONT CLUBS 

Beneath thy skies, November ! 

Thy skies of cloud and rain, 
Around our blazing camp-fires 
We close our ranks again. 

Then sound again the bugles, 
Call the nmster-roll anew; 



398 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



If months have well-nigh won the 
field, 
Whut may not four years do ? 

For God he praised ! New England 
Takes once more her ancient place; 

Again the Pilgrim's banner 

Leads the vanguard of the race. 
Then sound again the bugles, etc. 

Along the lordly Hudson, 
A shout of triumph l^reaks; 

The p]mpire State is speaking. 
From tiie ocean to the lakes. 

Then sound again the bugles, etc. 

The Northern hills are blazing, 
The Northern skies are bright; 

And tiie fair young West is turning 
Her forehead to the light ! 
Then sound again the bugles, etc. 

Push every outpost nearer, 

Press liard the hostile towers ! 
Another Balaklava, 

And tlie Malakoff is ours ! 
Then sound again the bugles. 
Call the muster-roll anew; 
If months have well-nigh won the 
field, 
What may not four years do ? 



THE PANORAMA 

" A ! fredome is a nobill thing ! 
Fredome mayse man to haif liking. 
Fredome all solace to man giffis ; 
He levys at ese that f rely levys ! 
A nobil hart may haif nane ese 
Na ellys noeht that may him plese 
Gyff Fredome f ally the.*" 

Archdeacon Barbour. 

Through the long hall the shut- 
tered windows shed 

A dubious light on every upturned 
head; 

On locks like those of Absalom the 
fair, 

On the bald apex ringed with scanty 
hair. 

On blank indifference and on curious 
stare ; 

On the pale Showman reading from 
his stage 

The hieroglyphics of that facial page; 



Half sad, half scornful, listening to the 

bruit 
Of restless cane-tap and impatient 

foot, 
And the shrill call, across the general 

din, lo 

" Roll up your curtain ! Let the show 

begin!" 

At length a murmur like the winds 

that break 
Into green waves the prairie's grassy 

lake. 
Deepened and swelled to music clear 

and loud. 
And, as the west-wind lifts a summer 

cloud. 
The curtain rose, disclosing wide and 

far 
A green land stretching to the evening 

star, 
Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees 
And flowers hummed over by the 

desert bees. 
Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of 

greenness show 20 

Fantastic outcrops of the rock be- 
low; 
The slow result of patient Nature's 

pains, 
And plastic fingering of her sun and 

rains; 
Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely 

windowed hall. 
And long escarpment of half-crum- 
bled wall, 
Huger than those which, from steep 

hills of vine. 
Stare through their loopholes on the 

travelled Rhine; 
Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's 

mind 
A fancy, idle as the prairie wind, 
Of the land's dwellers in an age un- 

guessed; 30 

The unsung Jotuns of the mystic 

West. 

Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells 
surpass 

The Tartar's marvels of his Land of 
Grass, 

Vast as the sky against whose sunset 
shores 

Wave after wave the billowy green- 
ness pours; 



THE PANORAMA 



399 




T. Starr King 
(Who read this poem at the opening of a course of lectures in Boston, 1856) 



And, onward still, like islands in that 

main, 
Loom the rough peaks of many a 

mountain chain, 
Whence east and west a thousand 

waters run 
From winter lingering under sum- 
mer's sun. 
And, still beyond, long lines of foam 

and sand 4° 

Tell where Pacific rolls his waves 

a-land. 
From many a wide-lapped port and 

land-locked bay. 
Opening with thunderous pomp the 

world's highway 
To Indian isles of spice, and marts of 

far Cathay. 

" Such," said the Showman, as the 
curtain fell, 



" Is the new Canaan of our Israel; 

The land of promise to the swaniiing 
North 

Which, hive-like, sends its annual sur- 
plus forth; 

To the poor Southron on his worn-out 
soil, 

Scathed by the curses of unnatural 
toil; so 

To Europe's exiles seeking liome and 
rest. 

And the lank nomads of the wander- 
ing West, 

Who, asking neither, in their lovo of 
change 

And the free bison's ampHtudc of 
range. 

Rear the log-hut, for present shelter 
meant. 

Not future comfort, like an Arab's 
tent." 



400 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Then spake a shrewd on-looker. 

"vSir," said lie, 
" I Uke your picture., but I fain would 

see 
A sketch of what your promised land 

will be 
When, with electric nerve and fiery- 

l)rained, ^° 

With Nature's forces to its chariot 

chained, 
The future grasping, by the past 

obeyed, 
The twentieth century rounds a new 

decade." 

Then said the Showman, sadly. 

" He who grieves 
Over the scattering of the sibyl's 

leaves 
Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we 

know 
What needs must ripen from the seeds 

we sow; 
That present time is but the mould 

wherein 
We cast the shapes of holiness and 

sin. 
A painful watcher of the passing 

hour, 70 

Its lust of gold, its strife for place and 

power; 
Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, 

truth, 
Wise-thoughted age, and generous- 
hearted youth; 
Nor yet unmindful of each better sign. 
The low, far lights, which on th' hori- 
zon shine, 
Like those which sometimes tremble 

on the rim 
Of clouded skies when day is closing 

dim, 
Flashing athwart the purple spears of 

rain 
The hope of sunshine on the hills 

again: 
I need no prophet's word, nor shapes 

that pass 80 

Like clouding shadows o'er a magic 

glass; 
For now, as ever, passionless and cold, 
Doth tlie dread angel of the future 

hold 
Evil and good before us, with no voice 
Or warning look to guide us in our 

choice; 



W^ith spectral hands outreaching 
through tlie gloom 

The shadowy contrasts of the coming 
doom. 

Transferred from these, it now remains 
to give 

The sun and shade of Fate's alterna- 
tive." 

Then, with a burst of music, touch- 
ing all 90 
The keys of thrifty life, — the mill- 
stream's fall, 
The engine's pant along its quivering 

rails, 
The anvil's ring, the measured beat of 

flails, 
The sweep of scythes, the reaper's 

whistled tune. 
Answering the summons of the bells 

of noon, 
The woodman's hail along the river 

shores, 
The steamboat's signal, and the dip of 

oars: 
Slowly the curtain rose from off a 

land 
Fair as God's garden. Broad on either 

hand 
The golden wheat-fields glimmered in 

the sun, 100 

And the tall maize its yellow tassels 

spun. 
Smooth highways set with hedge-rows 

living green. 
With steepled towns through shaded 

vistas seen, 
The school-house murmuring with its 

hive-like swarm. 
The brook-bank whitening in the 

grist-mill's storm. 
The painted farm-house shining 

through the leaves 
Of fruited orchards bending at its 

eaves, 
Where live again, around the Western 

hearth. 
The homely old-time virtues of the 

North; 
Where the blithe housewife rises with 

the day, no 

And well-paid labor counts his task a 

play. 
And, grateful tokens of a Bible 

free. 
And the free Gospel of Humanity, 



THE PANORAMA 



401 



Of diverse sects and differing names 
the shrines, 

One in th^ir faith, whate'er their out- 
ward signs, 

Lilve varying strophes of the same 
sweet hymn 

From many a prairie's swell and 
river's brim, 

A thousand church-spires sanctify the 
air 

Of the calm Sabbath, with their sign 
of prayer. 

Like sudden nightfall over bloom 

and green 120 

The curtain dropped : and, momently, 

between 
The clank of fetter and the crack of 

thong, 
Half sob, half laughter, music swept 

along ; 
A strange refrain, whose idle words 

and low, 
Like drunken mourners, kept the time 

of woe; 
As if the revellers at a masquerade 
Heard in the distance funeral marches 

played. 
Such music, dashing all his smiles 

with tears. 
The thoughtful voyager on Pontchar- 

train hears. 
Where, through the noonday dusk of 

wooded shores 130 

The negro boatman, singing to his oars. 
With a wild pathos borrowed of his 

wrong 
Redeems the jargon of his senseless 

song. 
" Look," said the Showman, sternly, 

as he rolled 
His curtain upward. " Fate's reverse 

behold!" 

A village straggling in loose disarray 
Of vulgar newness, premature decay; 
A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls, 
With "Slaves at Auction!" garnish- 
ing its walls; 
Without, surrounded by a motley 
crowd, '40 

The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous 

and loud, 
A squire or colonel in his pride of place, 
Known at free fights, the caucus, and 
the race; 



Prompt to proclaim his honor without 
blot. 

And silence doubters with a ten-pace 
shot; 

Mingling the negro-driving bully's 
rant 

With pious phrase and democratic 
cant; 

Yet never scrupling, with a filthy 
jest. 

To sell the infant from its mother's 
breast. 

Break through all ties of wedlock, 
home, and kin, 150 

Yield shrinking girlhood up to gray- 
beard sin; 

Sell all tiie virtues with his human 
stock, 

The Christian graces on his auction- 
block. 

And coolly count on shrewdest bar- 
gains driven 

In hearts regenerate, and in souls 
forgiven ! 

Look once again ! The moving can- 
vas shows 

A slave plantation's slovenly repose, 

Where, in rude cabins rotting midst 
their weeds. 

The human chattel cats, and sleeps, 
and breeds; 

And, held a brute, in practice, as in 
law, «6o 

Becomes in fact the thing he's taken 
for. 

There, early summoned to tiie hemp 
and corn, 

The nursing mother leaves her child 
new-born ; 

There haggard sickness, weak and 
deathly faint. 

Crawls to his "task, and fears to make 
complaint; 

And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in de- 
cay. 

Weep for" their lost ones sold and torn 



away 



Of ampler "size tlio master's dwelling 

stands, 
In shabby keeping with his half-tillod 

lands; 
The gates unhingetl, tlie yard with 

weeds unclean, ^ '^o 

The cracked veranda with a tipsy 

lean. 



4© 2 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Without, loose-scattered like a wreck 
adrift, 

Signs of misrule and tokens of un- 
thrift; 

Within, profusion to discomfort 
joined, 

The listless body and the vacant 
mind; 

The fear, the hate, the theft and false- 
hood, born 

In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, 
and scorn ! 

There, all the vices, which, like birds 
obscene, 

Batten on slavery loathsome and un- 
clean. 

From the foul kitchen to the parlor 
rise, 1 80 

Pollute the nursery where the child- 
heir lies, 

Taint infant lips beyond all after cure, 

With the fell poison of a breast im- 
pure; 

Touch boyhood's passions with the 
breath of flame. 

From girlhood's instincts steal the 
blush of shame. 

So swells, from low to high, from weak 
to strong, 

The tragic cliorusof the baleful wrong; 

Guilty or guiltless, all within its range 

Feel the blind justice of its sure re- 
venge. 

Still scenes like these the moving 
chart reveals. 190 

Up the long western steppes the blight- 
ing steals; 

Down the Pacific slope the evil Fate 

Glides like a shadow to the Golden 
Gate: 

From sea to sea the drear eclipse is 
thrown, 

From sea to sea the Mauvaises Terres 
have grown, 

A belt of curses on the New World's 
zone ! 

The curtain fell. All drew a freer 
breath, 

As men are wont to do when mournful 
death 

Is covered from their sight. The 
Sliowman stood 

With drooping brow in sorrow's atti- 
tude 200 



One moment, then with sudden ges- 
ture shook 

His loose hair back, and with the air 
and look 

Of one who felt, beyond the narrow 
stage 

And listening group, the presence of 
the age, 

And heard the footsteps of the things 
to be, 

Poured out his soul in earnest words 
and free. 

" O friends ! " he said, " in this poor 

trick of paint 
You see the semblance, incomplete 

and faint, 
Of the two-fronted Future, which, to- 
day. 
Stands dim and silent, waiting in your 

way. 210 

To-day your servant, subject to your 

will; 
To-morrow, master, or for good or ill. 
If the dark face of Slavery on you 

turns, 
If the mad curse its paper barrier 

spurns, 
If the world granary of the West is 

made 
The last foul market of the slaver's 

trade, 
Why rail at fate ? The mischief is your 

own. 
Why hate your neighbor? Blame 

yourselves alone ! 

" Men of the North ! The South you 

charge with wrong 
Is weak and poor, while you are rich 

and strong. 220 

If questions, — idle and absurd as 

those 
The old-time monks and Paduan doc- 
tors chose, — 
Mere ghosts of questions, tariffs, and 

dead banks, 
And scarecrow pontiffs, never broke 

your ranks. 
Your thews united could, at once, roll 

back 
The jostled nation to its primal track. 
Nay, were you simply steadfast, 

manly, just. 
True to the faith your fathers left in 

trust, 



THE PANORAMA 



4^3 



If stainless honor outweighed in your 
scale 

A codfish quintal or a factory bale, 230 

Full many a noble heart (and such re- 
main 

In all the South, like Lot in Siddim's 
plain, 

Who watch and wait, and from the 
wrong's control 

Keep white and pure their chastity of 
soul) ; 

Now sick to loathing of your weak 
complaints. 

Your tricks as sinners, and your pray- 
ers as saints. 

Would half-way meet the frankness of 
your tone. 

And feel their pulses beating with 
your own. 

"The North! the South! no geo- 
graphic line 

Can fix the boundary or the point 
define, 240 

Since each with each so closely inter- 
blends, 

Where Slavery rises, and where Free- 
dom ends. 

Beneath your rocks the roots, far- 
reaching, hide 

Of the fell Upas on the Southern 
side; 

The tree whose branches in your north 
winds wave 

Dropped its young blossoms on Mount 
. Vernon's grave; 

The nursing growth of Monticello's 
crest, 

Is now the glory of the free North- 
west; 

To the wise maxims of her olden 
school 

Virginia listened from thy lips, Ran- 
toul; 250 

Seward's words of power, and Sum- 
ner's fresh renown. 

Flow from the pen that Jefferson laid 
down ! 

And when, at length, her years of 
madness o'er. 

Like the crowned grazer on Euphra- 
tes' shore. 

From her long lapse to savagery, iier 
mouth 

Bitter with baneful herbage, turns the 
South, 



Resumes her old attire, and seeks to 

smooth 
Her unkempt tresses at the glass of 

truth, 
Her early faith shall find a tongue 

again, 
New Wythes and Pinckneys swell that 

old refrain, 260 

Her sons with yours renew the ancient 

pact. 
The myth of Union prove at last a 

fact! 
Then, if one murmur mars the wide 

content. 
Some Northern lip will drawl the last 

dissent. 
Some Union-saving patriot of your 

own 
Lament to find his occupation gone. 

" Grant that the North 's insulted, 
scorned, betrayed, 

O'erreached in bargains with lier 
neighbor made, 

When selfish tlirift and party held the 
scales 

For peddling dicker, not for honest 
sales, — 270 

Whom shall we strike ? Who most de- 
serves our blame ? 

The braggart Southron, open in liis 
aim, 

And bold as wicked, crashing straight 
through all 

That bars his purpose, like a cannon- 
ball? 

Or the mean traitor, breathing north- 
ern air. 

With nasal speech and puritanic hair, 

Whose cant the loss of principle sur- 
vives. 

As the mud-turtle e'en its head out- 
lives; 

Who, caught, chin-buried in some foul 
offence, 

Puts on a look of injured innocence. 

And consecrates his baseness to the 



cause 



281 



Of constitution, union, and the laws? 

" Praise to the place-man who can 
liold aloof, 
His still unpurchiisod manhood, office- 
proof; 
Wlio on his round of duty walks erect, 
And leaves it only rich in self-respect; 



404 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



As More maintained his virtue's lofty 

port 
In the Eighth Henry's base and 

bloody court. 
But, if exceptions here and there are 

found, 
Who tread thus safely on enchanted 

ground, 290 

The normal type, the fitting symbol 

still 
Of those who fatten at the public 

mill, 
Is the chained dog beside his master's 

door. 
Or Circe's victim, feeding on all four ! 

" Give me the heroes who, at tuck of 
drum, 

Salute thy staff, immortal Quattle- 
bum ! 

Or they who, doubly armed with vote 
and gun, 

Following thy lead, illustrious Atchi- 
son, 

Their drimken franchise shift from 
scene to scene. 

As tile-beard Jourdan did his guillo- 
tine ! 300 

Rather than him who, born beneath 
our skies. 

To Slavery's hand its supplest tool 
supplies; 

The party felon whose unblushing face 

Looks from the pillory of his bribe of 
place. 

And coolly makes a merit of disgrace, 

Points to the footmarks of indignant 
scorn, 

Shows the deep scars of satire's tossing 
horn ; 

And passes to his credit side the sum 

Of all that makes a scoundrel's martyr- 
dom ! 

" Bane of the North, its canker and 

its moth ! 310 

These modern Esaus, bartering rights 

for broth ! 
Taxing our justice, with their double 

claim. 
As fools for pity, and as knaves for 

blame; 
Who, urged by party, sect, or trade, 

within 
The fell embrace of Slavery's sphere of 

sin, 



Part at the outset with their moral 

sense. 
The watchful angel set for Truth's 

defence; 
Confound all contrasts, good and ill; 

reverse 
The poles of life, its blessing and its 

curse; 
And lose thenceforth from their per- 
verted sight ^20 
The eternal difference 'twixt the 

wrong and right; 
To them the Law is but the iron 

span 
That girds the ankles of imbruted 

man; 
To them the Gospel has no higher 

aim 
Than simple sanction of the master's 

claim. 
Dragged in the slime of Slavery's 

loathsome trail. 
Like Chalier's Bible at his ass's tail ! 

"Such are the men who, with in- 
stinctive dread, 

Whenever Freedom lifts her drooping 
head. 

Make prophet-tripods of their office- 
stools, 330 

And scare the nurseries and the vil- 
lage schools 

With dire presage of ruin grim and 
great, 

A broken Union and a foundered 
State ! 

Such are the patriots, self-bound to 
the stake 

Of office, martyrs for their country's 
sake : 

Who fill themselves the hungry jaws 
of Fate, 

And by their loss of manhood save the 
State. 

In the wide gulf themselves like Cur- 
tius throw, 

And test the virtues of cohesive dough ; 

As tropic monkeys, linking heads and 
tails, 340 

Bridge o'er some torrent of Ecuador's 
vales ! 

"Such are the men who in your 
churches rave 
To swearing-point, at mention of the 
slave ! 



THE PANORAMA 



405 



When some poor parson, haply un- 
awares, 

Stammers of freedom in his timid 
prayers; 

Who, if some foot-sore negro through 
the town 

Steals northward, volunteer to hunt 
him down. 

Or, if some neighbor, flying from dis- 
ease, 

Courts the mild balsam of the South- 
ern breeze. 

With hue and cry pursue him on his 
track, 350 

And write Free-soiler on the poor 
man's back. 

Such are the men who leave the ped- 
ler's cart, 

While faring Soutli, to learn the driv- 
er's art, 

Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with 
pious aim 

The graceful sorrows of some languid 
dame, 

Who, from the wreck of her bereave- 
ment, saves 

The double charm of widowhood and 
slaves ! 

Pliant and apt, they lose no chance 
to show 

To what base depths apostasy can go; 

Outdo tlie natives in their readiness 

To roast a negro, or to mob a press; 

Poise a tarred schoolmate on the 
lyncher's rail, 362 

Or make a bonfire of their birthplace 
mail ! 

"So some poor wretch, whose lips 
no longer l^ear 

The sacred burden of his mother's 
prayer. 

By fear impelled, or lust of gold en- 
ticed, 

Turns to the Crescent from the Cross 
of Christ, 

And, overacting in superfluous zeal, 

Crawls prostrate where the faithful 
only kneel. 

Out-howls the Dervish, hugs his rags 
to court -^70 

Tlie squalid Santon's sanctity of dirt; 

And, when beneath the city gateway's 
span 

Files slow and long the Meccan cara- 
van, 



And through its midst, pursued by 
Islam's prayers. 

The propliet's Word some favored 
camel bears, 

The marked apostate has his place 
assigned 

The Koran-bearer's sacred rump be- 
hind, 

With brush and pitcher following, 
grave and mute, 

In meek attendance on the holy 
brute ! 

" Men of the North ! beneatli vour 
very eyes, " 380 

By hearth and home, your real danger 
lies. 

Still day by day some hold of freedom 
falls 

Through home-bred traitors fed 
witiiin its walls. 

Men whom yourselves with vote and 
purse sustain. 

At posts of honor, influence, and 
gain; 

The right of Slavery to your sons to 
teach. 

And 'South-side' Gospels in your pul- 
pits preach, 

Transfix tlie Law to ancient freedom 
dear 

On the sharp point of her subverted 
spear, 

And imitate upon her cushion plump 

The mad Missourian lynching from liis 
stump; 301 

Or, in your name, upon the Senate's 
floor 

Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and 
more; 

And, ere your dull eyes open to the 
cheat, 

Sell your old homestead underneath 
your feet ! 

While such Jis these your loftiest out- 
looks hold. 

While truth and conscience with your 
wares are sold, 

While grave-browed inerchants band 
themselves to aid 

An annual man-hunt for their South- 
ern trade. 

What moral power within yo\ir griusp 
remains •»oo 

To stay the mischief on Nebraska's 
plains ? 



4o6 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



High as the tides of generous impulse 
flow, 

As far rolls back the selfish under- 
tow ; 

And all your brave resolves, though 
aimed as true 

As the horse-pistol Balmawhapple 
drew, 

To Slavery's bastions lend as slight a 
shock 

As the poor trooper's shot to Stirling 
rock ! 

" Yet, while the need of Freedom's 
cause demands 

The earnest efforts of your hearts and 
hands, 

Urged by all motives that can prompt 
the heart 410 

To prayer and toil and manhood's 
manliest part; 

Though to the soul's deep tocsin Na- 
ture joins 

The warning whisper of her Orphic 
pines. 

The north-wind's anger, and the 
south-wind's sigh. 

The midnight sword-dance of the 
northern sky, 

And, to the ear that bends above the 
sod 

Of tlie green grave-mounds in the 
Fields of God, 

In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or 
cheer. 

The land's dead fathers speak their 
hope or fear, 

Yet let not Passion wrest from Rea- 
son's hand 420 

The guiding rein and symbol of com- 
mand. 

Blame not the caution proffering to 
your zeal 

A well-meant drag upon its hurrying 
wheel; 

Nor chide the man whose honest 
doubt extends 

To the means only, not the righteous 
ends; 

Nor fail to weigh the scruples and the 
fears 

Of milder natures and serener years. 

In the long strife with evil which be- 
gan 

With the first lapse of new-created 
man, 



Wisely and well has Providence as- 
signed 430 
To each his part, — some forward, 

some behind; 
And they, too, serve who temper and 

restrain 
The o'er warm heart that sets on fire 

the brain. 
True to yourselves, feed Freedom's 

altar-flame 
With what you have; let others do the 

same. 
Spare timid doubters; set like flint 

your face 
Against the self-sold knaves of gain 

and place: 
Pity the weak; but with unsparing 

hand 
Cast out the traitors who infest the 

land; 
From bar, press, pulpit, cast them 

everywhere, 440 

By dint of fasting, if you fail by 

prayer. 
And in their place bring men of an- 
tique mould. 
Like the grave fathers of your Age of 

Gold; 
Statesmen like those who sought the 

primal fount 
Of righteous law, the Sermon on the 

Mount; 
Lawyers who prize, like Quincy (to 

our day 
Still spared. Heaven bless him !) 

honor more than pay, 
And Christian jurists, starry-pure, like 

Jay; 
Preachers like Woolman, or like them 

who bore 
The faith of Wesley to our Western 

shore, 4So 

And held no convert genuine till he 

broke 
Alike his servants' and the Devil's 

yoke; _ 
And priests like him who Newport's 

market trod. 
And o'er its slave-ships shook the 

bolts of God ! 
So shall your power, with a wise pru- 
dence used. 
Strong but forbearing, firm but not 

abused, 
In kindly keeping with the good of all, 
The nobler maxims of the past recall, 



THE PANORAMA 



407 



Her natural home-ljorn right to Free- 
dom give, 

And leave her foe his robber-right, — 
to live. '460 

Live, as the snake does in his noisome 
fen! 

Live, as the wolf does in his bone- 
strewn den ! 

Live, clothed with cursing like a robe 
of flame, 

The focal point of million-fingered 
shame ! 

Live, till the Southron, who, with all 
his faults. 

Has manly instincts, in his pride re- 
volts. 

Dashes from off him, midst the glad 
world's cheers, 

The hideous nightmare of his dream 
of years. 

And lifts, self -prompted, with his own 
right hand. 

The vile encumbrance from his glori- 
ous land ! 470 

" So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends 
^ forth 
Its widening circles to the South or 

North, 
Where'er our banner flaunts beneath 

the stars 
Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike 

bars. 
There shall Free Labor's hardy chil- 
dren stand 
The equal sovereigns of a slaveless 

land. 
And when at last the hunted bison tires, 
And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's 

fires; 
And westward, wave on wave, the liv- 
ing flood 
Breaks on the snow-line of majestic 

Hood; 480 

And lonely Shasta listening hears the 

tread 
Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hes- 

per-led ; 
And, gazing downward through his 

hoar-locks, sees 
The tawny Asian climb his giant 

knees. 
The Eastern sea shall hush his waves 

to hear 
Pacific's surf-beat answer Freedom's 

cheer, 



And one long rolling fire of triumph 



run 



Between the sunrise and the sunset 
gun!" 



My task is done. The Showman and 

his show, 
Themselves but shadows, into sliad- 

owsgo; 4go 

And, if no song of idlesse I have sung, 
Nor tints of beauty on the canvas 

flung; 
If the harsli numbers grate on tender 

ears, 
And the rough picture overwrouglit 

appears. 
With deeper coloring, with a sterner 

blast, 
Before my soul a voice and vision 

passed, 
Such as might Milton's jarring trump 

require, 
Or glooms of Dante fringed with hiriil 

fire. 
Oh, not of choice, for themes of pul)lic 

wrong 
I leave the green and pleasant paths of 

song, 500 

The mild, sweet words wliicli soften 

and adorn, 
For sharp rebuke and bitter laugh of 

scorn. 
More dear to me some song of private 

worth, 
Some homely idyl of my native North, 
Some summer pastoral of her inland 

vales, 
Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside 

tales 
Haunted by ghosts of unreturning 

sails. 
Lost barks at parting hung from stem 

to helm 
With prayers of love like dreams on 

Virgil's elm. 
Nor private grief nor malice holds my 

pen; s«o 

I owe but kindness to my fellow-men; 
And, South or North, wherever hearts 

of prayer 
Their woes and weakness to our Fa- 
ther bear, 
Wherever fruits of Christian love are 

found 
In holy lives, to me is holy ground. 



4o8 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



liut the time passes. It were vain to 

crave 
A late indulgence. What I had I gave. 
Forget the poet, but his warning 

heed, 
And shame his poor word with your 

nobler deed. 



ON A PRAYER-BOOK 

WITH ITS FRONTISPIECE, ARY SCHEF- 
fer's "christus CONSOLATOR," 
AMERICANIZED BY THE OMISSION OF 
THE BLACK MAN 

O Ary Scheffer ! when beneath thine 
eye, 
Touclied witli the light that cometh 

from above. 
Grew the sweet picture of the dear 
Lord's love, 
No dream hadst tliou that Christian 

hands would tear 
Therefrom the token of His equal 

care. 
And make thy symbol of His truth 

a lie! 
The poor, dumb slave whose shackles 
fall away 
In His compassionate gaze, grubbed 

smoothly out. 
To mar no more the exercise de- 
vout 
Of sleek oppression kneeling down to 
pray lo 

Where the great oriel stains the Sab- 
bath day ! 
Let whoso can before such praying- 
books 
Kneel on his velvet cushion; I, for 

one, 
Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the 
sun, 
Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetan 
l)rooks. 
Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple- 
floor. 
No falser idol man has bowed be- 
fore. 
In Indian groves or islands of the 
sea. 
Than that which through the 
quaint-carved Gothic door 
Looks forth, — a Church without hu- 
manity 1 20 



. Patron of pride, and prejudice, and 

wrong, — 
The rich man's charm and fetich of 

the strong, 
The Eternal Fulness meted, clipped, 

and shorn. 
The seamless robe of equal mercy 

torn. 
The dear Christ hidden from His kin- 
dred flesh. 
And, in His poor ones, crucified 

afresh ! 
Better the simple Lama scattering 

wide. 
Where sweeps the storm Alechan's 

steppes along. 
His paper horses for the lost to ride, 
And wearying Buddha with his pray- 
ers to make 30 
The figures living for the traveller's 

sake, 
Than he who hopes with cheap praise 

to beguile 
The ear of God, dishonoring man the 

while; 
Who dreams the pearl gate's hinges, 

rusty grown. 
Are moved by flattery's oil of tongue 

alone; 
That in the scale Eternal Justice bears 
The generous deed weighs less than 

selfish prayers. 
And words intoned with graceful unc- 
tion move 
The Eternal Goodness more than lives 

of truth and love. 
Alas, the Church ! The reverend head 

of Jay, 40 

Enhaloed with its saintly silvered 

hair, 
Adorns no more the places of her 

prayer; 
And brave young Tyng, too early 

called away. 
Troubles the Haman of her courts 

no more 
Like the just Hebrew at the Assyr- 
ian's door; 
And her sweet ritual, beautiful but 

dead 
As the dry husk from which the 

grain is shed, 
And holy hymns from which the life 

devout 
Of saints and martyrs has well nigh 

gone out, 



THE SUMMONS 



409 




"Christus Consolator,'' by Ary Solieffer 



Like candles dying in exhausted air, 50 
For Sabbath use in measured grists 

are ground; 
And, ever while the spiritual mill 
goes round, 
Between the upper and the nether 

stones. 
Unseen, unheard, the wretched 
bondman groans. 
And urges his vain plea, prayer- 
smothered, anthem-drowned ! 

Oheartof mine, keep patience! Look- 
ing forth. 
As from the Mount of Vision, I be- 
hold. 
Pure, just, and free, the Church of 
Christ on earth; 
The martyr's dream, the golden age 
foretold ! 
And found, at last, the mystic Graal 
I see, ^° 

Brimmed with His blessing, pass 

from lip to lip 
In sacred pledge of human fellow- 
ship; 



And over all tiie songs of angels 

hear; 
Songs of the love that casteth out all 

fear; 
Songs of the Gospel of Humanity ! 
Lo ! in the midst, with the same 

look He wore, 
Healing and blessing on Gennesa- 

ret's shore. 
Folding together, with the all-tender 

might 
Of His great love, the dark hands and 

the white, 
Stands the Consoler, soothing every 

pain, 70 

Making all burdens light, and lircak- 

ing every chain. 



THE SUMMONS 

My ear is full of summer sounds, 
Of summer sights my languid eye; 

Beyond the dusty village luiunds 

I loiter in mv daily rounds, 

And in the nooii-time shadows lie. 



4IO 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



I hear the wild hro wind his liorn, 
Tlie bird swings on the ripened 
wheat, 
The long green lances of the corn 
Are tilting in the winds of morn, 
The locust shrills his song of heat. 

Another sound my spirit hears, 

A deeper sound that drowns them 
all; 
A voice of pleading choked with tears, 
The call of human hopes and fears, 
Tlie Macedonian cry to Paul ! 

The storm-bell rings, the trumpet 
blows; 
T know the word and countersign; 
Wiicrever Freedom's vanguard goes. 
Where stand or fall her friends or foes, 
I know the place that should he 
mine. 

Shamed be the hands that idly fold, 
And lips that woo the reed's accord. 

When laggard Time the hour has 
tolled 

For true with false and new with old 
To fight the battles of the Lord ! 

O brothers ! Idlest by partial Fate 

With power to match the will and 

deed, 

To him your summons comes too late 

Who sinks beneath his armor's weiglit, 

And has no answer but God-speed ! 



TO WILLIAM H. SEW^ARD 

Statesman, I thank thee ! and, if yet 
dissent 

Mingles, reluctant, with my large con- 
tent, 

I cannot censure what was nobly 
meant. 

But, while constrained to hold even 
Union less 

Than Liberty and Truth and Right- 
eousness, 

I thank thee in the sweet and holy 
name 

Of peace, for wise calm words that 
put to shame 

Passion and party. Courage may be 
sho-vATi 

Not in defiance of the wrong alone; 



He may be bravest who, unweaponed, 

bears 
The olive branch, and, strong in jus- 
tice, spares 
The rash wrong-doer, giving widest 

scope 
To Christian charity and generous 

hope. 
If, without damage to the sacred 

cause 
Of Freedom and the safeguard of its 

laws — 
If, without yielding that for which 

alone 
We prize the Union, thou canst save it 

now 
From a baptism of blood, upon thy 

brow 
A wreath whose flowers no earthly 

soil have known. 
Woven of the beatitudes, shall rest, 
And the peacemaker be forever blest ! 



IN WAR TIME 

TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL AND 
HARRIET W. SEWALL 

OF MELROSE 

Olor Iscanus queries: "Why should 
we 

Vex at the land's ridiculous miserie?" 

So on his Usk banks, in the blood-red 
• dawn 

Of England's civil strife, did careless 
Vaughan 

Bemock his times. O friends of many 
years ! 

Though faith and trust are stronger 
than our fears, 

And the signs promise peace with lib- 
erty. 

Not thus we trifle with our country's 
tears 

And sweat of agony. The future's 
gain 

Is certain as God's truth; but, mean- 
while, pain 

Is bitter and tears are salt : our voices 
take 

A sober tone; our very household 
songs 

Are heavy with a nation's griefs and 
wrongs; 



THY WILL BE DONE 



411 




William H. Seward 



And innocent mirth is chastened for 

the sake 
Of the brave hearts that nevermore 

shall beat, 
The eyes that smile no more, the vmre- 

turning feet ! 



THY WILL BE DONE 

We see not, know not; all our way 
Is night, — with Thee alone is day: 
From out the torrent's troubled drift. 
Above the storm our prayers we lift. 
Thy will be done ! 



The flesh may fail, the heart may 

faint. 
But who are we to make comj)laiiit, 
Or dare to plead, in times like these, 
The weakness of our love of ease ? 
Thy will be done ! 

We take with solemn thankfulness 
Our l)urden up, nor ask it less, 
And count it joy tliat even we 
May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee, 
Whose will be done! 

Though dim as yet in tint and lino, 
We trace Thy picture's wise design, 



4T2 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



And thank Thee that our age supplies 
Its dark relief of sacritice. 
Thy will be done ! 

And if, in our unworthiness, 
Tiiy sacrificial wine we press; 
If from Thy ordeal's heated bars 
Our feet are seamed with crimson 
scars, 
Thy will be done ! 

If, for the age to come, this hour 
Of trial hath vicarious power, 
And, blest by Tliee, our present pain 
Be Liberty's eternal gain, 
Thy will be done ! 

Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys. 
The anthem of the destinies! 
The minor of Thy loftier strain, 
Our hearts shall Ijreathe the old re- 
frain. 
Thy will be done ! 



A WORD FOR THE HOUR 

The firmament breaks up. In black 
eclipse 

Light after light goes out. One evil 
star. 

Luridly glaring through the smoke of 
war. 

As in the dream of the Apocalypse, 

Drags others down. Let us not weakly 
weep 

Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to 
keep 

Our faith and patience; wherefore 
should we leap 

On one hand into fratricidal fight, 

( )r, on the other, yield eternal right. 

Frame lies of law, and good and ill 
confound ? 

What fear we? Safe on freedom's 
vantage-ground 

Our feet are planted: let us there re- 
main 

In unre vengeful calm, no means un- 
tried 

Which truth can sanction, no just 
claim denied. 

The sad spectators of a suicide ! 

They break the links of Union : shall 
we light 



The fires of hell to weld anew the chain 

On that red anvil where each blow is 
pain ? 

Draw we not even now a freer breath, 

As from our shoulders falls a load of 
death 

Loathsome as that the Tuscan's vic- 
tim bore 

When keen with life to a dead horror 
bound ? 

Why take we up the accursed thing 
again ? 

Pity, forgive, but urge them back no 
more 

Who, drunk with passion, flaunt dis- 
union's rag 

With its vile reptile-blazon. Let us 
press 

The golden cluster on our brave old flag 

In closer union, and, if numbering less, 

Brighter shall shine the stars which 
still remain. 
16th 1st mo., 1861 



"EIN FESTE BURG 1ST UNSER 
GOTT" 

Luther's hymn 

We wait beneath the furnace-blast 

The pangs of transformation; 
Not painlessly doth God recast 
And mould anew the nation. 
Hot burns the fire 
Where wrongs expire; 
Nor spares the hand 
That from the land 
Uproots the ancient evil. 

The hand-breadth cloud the sages 
feared lo 

Its bloody rain is dropping; 
The poison plant the fathers spared 
All else is overtopping. 

East, West, South, North, 
It curses the earth; 
All justice dies, 
And fraud and lies 
Live only in its shadow. 

What gives the wheat-field blades of 
steel ? 

What points the rel)el cannon ? 20 
What sets the roaring rabble's heel 

On the old star-spangled pennon ? 



TO JOHN C. FREMONT 



What breaks the oath 
Of the men o' the South ? 
What whets the knife 
For the Union's hfe ? — 
Hark to the answer : Slavery ! 

Then waste no blows on lesser foes 

In strife, unworthy freemen. 
God lifts to-day the veil, and shows 30 
The features of the demon ! 
O North and South, 
Its victims both, 
Can ye not cry, 
" Let slavery die ! " 
And union find in freedom ? 

What though the cast-out spirit tear 

The nation in his going ? 
We who have shared the guilt must 
share 
The pang of his o'erthrowing ! 40 
Whate'er the loss, 
Whate'er the cross, 
Shall they complain 
Of present pain 
Who trust in God's hereafter ? 

For who that leans on His right arm 

Was ever yet forsaken ? 
What rigliteous cause can suffer harm 
If He its part has taken ? 

Though wild and loud, 50 

And dark the cloud. 
Behind its folds 
His hand upholds 
The calm sky of to-morrow ! 

Above the maddening cry for blood, 

Above the wild war-drumming. 
Let Freedom's voice be heard, with good 
The evil overcoming. 
Give prayer and purse 
To stay the Curse 60 

Whose wrong we share, 
Whose shame we bear, 
Whose end shall gladden Heaven ! 

In vain the bells of war shall ring 

Of triumphs and revenges, 
While still is spared the evil thing 
That severs and estranges. 
But blest the ear 
That yet shall hear 
The jubilant bell ^° 

That rings the knell 
Of Slavery forever ! 



413 



Then let the selfish lip be dumb, 

And hushed the breath of sighinp;; 
Before the joy of peace nmst come ' 
The pains of purifying. 
God give us grace 
Each in his place 
To bear his lot, 
^ And, murmuring not, 80 

Endure and wait and labor! 



TO JOHN C. FREMONT 

Thy error, Fremont, simply was to 
act 

A brave man's part, without the 
statesman's tact, 

And, taking counsel but of conunon 
sense. 

To strike at cause as well as conse- 
quence. 

Oh, never yet since Roland wound his 
horn 

At Roncesvalles, has a blast been 
blown 

Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as 
thine own. 

Heard from the van of freedom's hope 
forlorn ! 

It had been safer, doubtless, for tlie 
time. 

To flatter treason, and avoid offence 

To that Dark Power whose underly- 
ing crime 

Heaves upward its perpetual turbu- 
lence. 

But if thine be the fate of all who 
break 

The ground for truth's seed, or fore- 
run their years 

Till lost in distance, or with stout 
hearts make 

A lane for freedom througli the level 
spears, 

Still take thou courage! God has 
spoken through thee. 

Irrevocable, the mighty words. Be 
free! 

The land shakes with them, and tlic 
slave's dull ear 

Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily 
to hear. 

Who would recall them now must 
first arrest • 

The winds that blow down from the 
free Northwest, 



414 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Ruffling the Gulf; or like a scroll roll 

back 
The Mississippi to its upper springs. 
Such Avords fulfil their prophecy, and 

lack 
But the full time to harden into things. 



THE WATCHERS 

Reside n stricken field I stood; 

On the torn turf, on grass and wood, 

Hung heavily the dew of blood. 

Still in their fresh mounds lay the 

slain, 
But all the air was quick with pain 
And gusty sighs and tearful rain. 

Two angels, each with drooping head 
And folded wings and noiseless tread, 
Watched by that valley of the dead. 

The one, with forehead saintly bland 
And lips of blessing, not command, n 
Leaned, weeping, on her olive wand. 

The other's brows were scarred and 

knit, 
His restless eyes were watch-fires lit. 
His hands for battle-gauntlets fit. 

" How long ! " — I knew the voice of 

Peace, — 
" Is there no respite ? no release ? 
When shall the hopeless quarrel cease ? 

"O Lord, how long! One human 

soul 
Is more than any parchment scroll, 20 
Or any flag thy winds unroll. 

"What price was Ellsworth's, young 

and brave? 
How weigh the gift that Lyon gave. 
Or count the cost of Winthrop's 

grave ? 

"O brother! if thine eye can see. 
Tell how and when the end shall be, 
What hope remains for thee and me." 

Then Freedom sternly said : " I shun 
No strife nor pang beneath the sun. 
When human rights are staked and 
won. ,0 



" I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock, 
I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock, 
I walked with Sidney to the block. 

" The moor of Marston felt my tread, 
Through Jersey snows the march I led, 
My voice Magenta's charges sped. 

" But now, through weary day and 

night, 
I watch a vague and aimless fight 
For leave to strike one blow aright. 

"On either side my foe they own: 40 
One guards through love his ghastly 

throne. 
And one through fear to reverence 

grown. 

"Why wait we longer, mocked, be- 
trayed, 
By open foes, or those afraid 
To speed thy coming through my aid ? 

" Why watch to see who win or fall ? 
I shake the dust against them all, 
I leave them to their senseless brawl." 

"Nay," Peace implored: "yet longer 

wait; 
The doom is near, the stake is great: 
God knoweth if it be too late. 51 

"Still wait and watch; the way pre- 
pare 
Where I with folded wings of prayer 
May follow, weaponless and bare." 

"Too late!" the stern, sad voice re- 
plied, 

"Too late!" its mournful echo 
sighed. 

In low lament the answer died. 

A rustling as of wings in flight. 

An upward gleam of lessening white. 

So passed the vision, sound and sight. 

But round me, like a silver bell 61 
Rung down the listening sky to tell 
Of holy help, a sweet voice fell. 

"Still hope and trust," it sang; "the 

rod 
Must fall, the wine-press must be trod, 
But all is possible with God!" 



MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS 



415 



TO ENGLISHMEN 

You flung your taunt across the wave; 

We bore it as became us, 
Well knowing that the fettered slave 
Left friendly lips no option save 

To pity or to blame us. 

You scoffed our plea. " Mere lack of 
will , 
Not lack of power," you told us: 
We showed our free-state records; 

still 
You mocked, confounding good and 
ill, 
Slave-haters and slaveholders. 10 

We struck at Slavery; to the verge 
Of power and means we checked it; 

Lo ! — presto, change ! its claims you 
urge. 

Send greetings to it o'er the surge. 
And comfort and protect it 

But yesterday you scarce could shake, 

In slave-abhorring rigor, 
Our Northern palms for conscience' 

sake: 
To-day you clasp the hands that ache 

With " walloping the nigger " ! 20 

O Englishmen ! — in hope and creed, 
In blood and tongue our brothers ! 

We too are heirs of Runnymede; 

And Shakespeare's fame and Crom- 
well's deed 
Are not alone our mother's. 

" Thicker than water," in one rill 

Through centuries of story 
Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still 
We share with you its good and ill. 
The shadow and the glory. 30 

Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of 
wave 

Nor length of years can part us: 
Your right is ours to shrine and grave. 
The common freehold of the brave. 

The gift of saints and martyrs. 

Our very sins and follies teach 

Our kindred frail and human: 
We carp at faults with bitter speech. 
The while, for one unshared by each. 
We have a score in common. 40 



We bowed the heart, if not the 
knee, 
To England's Queen, God bless 
her ! 
We praised you when your slaves 

went free: 
We seek to unchain ours. Will ye 
Join hands with the oppressor ? 

And is it Christian England cheers 

The bruiser, not the brui-sed ? 
And must she run, despite the tears 
And prayers of eighteen hundred 
years, 
Amuck in Slavery's crusade ? so 

Oh, black disgrace! Oh, shame and 
loss 

Too deep for tongue to pliraae on ! 
Tear from your flag its holy cross, 
And in your van of battle toss 

The pirate's skull-bone blazon ! 



MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS 

Know'st thou, O slave-cursed 
land! 
How, when the Chian's cup of guilt 
Was full to overflow, there came 
God's justice in the sword 6i 
flame 
That, red with slaughter to its hilt. 
Blazed in the Cappadocian victor's 
hand ? 

The heavens are still and far; 
But, not unheard of awful Jove, 
The sighing of the island slav(> 
Was answered, when the .Egean 
wave 
The keels of Mithridates clove. 
And the vines shrivelled in the breath 
of war. 

" Robbers of Chios ! hark,"^ 
The victor cried, "to Heaven's de- 
cree ! 
Pluck your last cluster from the 

vine. 
Drain your last cup of Chian 
wine; 
Slaves of your slaves, your doom 
shall be, 
In Colchian mines bv Phasis rolling 
dark." 



4i6 



ANTI-SLAYERY POEMS 



Then rose the long lament 
From tlie hoar sea-god's dusky 
caves : 
The priestess rent her hair and 

cried, 
" Woe ! woe ! The gods are sleep- 
less-eyed!" 
And, chained and scourged, the 
slaves of slaves. 
The lords of Chios into exile went. 

"The gods at last pay well," 
So Hellas sang her taunting song, 
" The fisher in his net is caught, 
The Chian hath his master 
bought;" 
And isle from isle, with laughter 
long, 
Took up and sped the mocking para- 
ble. 

Once more the slow, dumb years 
Bring their avenging cycle round, 
And, more than Hellas taught of 

old. 
Our wiser lesson shall be told. 
Of slaves uprising, freedom- 
crowned. 
To break, not wield, the scourge wet 
with their blood and tears. 



AT PORT ROYAL 

The tent-liglits glimmer on the land, 
The ship-lights on the sea; 

The night- wind smooths with drifting 
sand 
Our track on lone Tybee. 

At last our grating keels outslide. 
Our good boats forward swing; 

And while we ride the land-locked 
tide, 
Our negroes row and sing. 

For dear the bondman holds his 
gifts 

Of music and of song: lo 

The gold that kindly Nature sifts 

Among his sands of wrong; 

The power to make his toiling days 
And poor home-comforts please; 

The quaint relief of mirth tliat plays 
With sorrow's minor keys. 



Another glow than sunset's fire 
Has filled the west with light. 

Where field and garner, barn and 
byre. 
Are blazing through the night. 20 

The land is wild with fear and hate, 
The rout runs mad and fast; 

From hand to hand, from gate to 
gate 
The flaming brand is passed. 

The lurid glow falls strong across 
Dark faces broad with smiles: 

Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss 
That fire yon blazing piles. 

With oar-strokes timing to their 
song, 

They weave in simple lays 30 

The pathos of remembered wrong, 

The hope of better days, — 

The triumph-note that Miriam sung. 

The joy of uncaged birds: 
Softening with Afric's mellow tongue 

Their broken Saxon words. 



SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN 

Oh, praise an' tanks! De Lord he 
come 
To set de people free; 
An' massa tink it day ob doom, 

An' we ob jubilee. 40 

De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves 

He jus' as 'trong as den; 
He say de word: we las' night slaves; 
To-day, de Lord's free men. 

De yam will grow, de cotton 
blow, 
We'll hab de rice an' corn; 
Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you 
hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 

Ole massa on he trabbels gone; 

He leaf de land ])ehind: 50 

De Lord's breff blow him furder 
on. 

Like corn-shuck in de wind. 
We own de hoe, we own de plough, 

We own de hands dat hold; 
We sell de pig, we sell de cow, 

But nebber chile be sold. 



ASTR^A AT THE CAPITOL 



417 



De yam will grow, de cotton 
blow, 
We'll hab de rice an' corn; 
Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you 
hear 
De driver blow his horn 1 60 

We pray de Lord: he gib us signs 

Dat some day we be free; 
De norf-wind tell it to de pines, 

De wild-duck to de sea; 
We tink it when de church-bell ring. 

We dream it in de dream; 
De rice-bird mean it when he sing, 
De eagle when he scream. 

De yam will grow, de cotton 
blow. 
We'll hab de rice an' corn; 70 
Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you 
hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 

We know de promise nebber fail, 

An' nebber lie de word; 
So, like de 'postles in de jail, 

We waited for de Lord : 
An' now he open ebery door. 

An' trow away de key; 
He tink we lub him so before. 

We lub him better free. 80 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow. 

He'll gib de rice an' corn; 
Oh nebber you fear, if nebber you 
hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 

So sing our dusky gondoliers; 

And with a secret pain, 
And smiles that seem akin to tears, 

We hear the wild refrain. 

We dare not share the negro's trust. 
Nor yet his hope deny; 90 

We only know that God is just, 
And every wrong shall die. 

Rude seems the song; each swarthy 
face. 

Flame-lighted, ruder still: 
We start to think that hapless race 

Must shape our good or ill; 

That laws of changeless justice bind 

Oppressor with oppressed; 
And, close as sin and suffering joined. 

We march to Fate abreast. 10° 



Sing on, poor hearts ! your chant shall 
be 

Our sign of blight or bloom. 
The Vala-song of Liberty, 

Or death-rune of our doom ! 



ASTR^A AT THE CAPITOL 

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DIS- 
TRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1862 

When first I saw our banner wave 
Above the nation's council-hall, 
I heard beneath its marble wall 

The clanking fetters of the slave ! 

In the foul market-place I stood, 
And saw the Christian mother sold. 
And childhood with its locks of gold. 

Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood. 

I shut my eyes, I held my breath, 

And, smothering down the wrath 

and shame lo 

That set my Northern blood aflame. 

Stood silent, — where to speak was 

death. 

Beside me gloomed the prison-cell 
Where wasted one in slow decline 
For uttering simple words of mine, 

And loving freedom all too well. 

The flag that floated from the dome 
Flapped menace in the morning air; 
I stood a perilled stranger wiiere 

The human broker made his home. 20 



For 



virtue: Gown and 



crime was 
Sword 
And Law their threefold sanction 

gave. 
And to the quarry of the slave 
Went hawking with our symbol-bird. 

On the oppressor's side was power; 
And yet I knew that every wrong. 
However old, however strong. 

But waited God's avenging hour. 

I knew that truth would crush the lie, — 
Somehow, some time, the end 
would be; 30 

Yet scarcely dared I hope to see 

The triumph with my mortal eye. 



4i8 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Hut now I see it! In the sun 

A free flag flouts from yonder dome, 
And at the nation's hearth and 
liome 

The justice long delayed is done. 

Not as we lioped, in calm of prayer, 
The message of deliverance comes, 
But heralded l\y roll of drums 

On waves of battle-troubled air ! 40 

Midst sounds tliat madden and ap- 
pall. 
The song that Bethlehem's shep- 
herds knew ! 
The harp of David melting through 
The demon-agonies of Saul ! 

Not iis we hoped; l)ut what are we? 
Above our broken dreams and 

plans 
God lays, with wiser hand than 
man's. 
The corner-stones of liberty. 

I cavil not with Him: the voice 
That freedom's blessed gospel tells 
Is sweet to me as silver bells, 51 

Rejoicing ! yea, I will rejoice ! 

Dear friends still toiling in the sun; 
Ye dearer ones who, gone before. 
Are watching from the eternal 
shore 

The slow work by your hands begun. 

Rejoice with me! The chastening 
rod 
Blossoms with love; the furnace 

heat 
Grows cool beneath His blessed 
feet 
Whose form is as the Son of God ! 60 

Rejoice ! Our Marah's bitter springs 
Are sweetened; on our ground of 

grief 
Rise day by day in strong relief 

The prophecies of better things. 

Rejoice in hope I The day and night 
Are one with God, and one with 

them 
Who see by faitli the cloudy hem 
Of judgment fringed with Mercv's 
light! 



THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862 

The flags of war like storm-birds fly, 
The charging trumpets blow; 

Yet rolls no thunder in the sky. 
No earthquake strives below. 

And, calm and patient. Nature keeps 

Her ancient promise well, 
Tliough o'er her bloom and greenness 
sweeps 

The battle's breath of hell. 

And still she walks in golden hours 
Through harvest-happy farms. 

And still she wears her fruits and 
■flowers 
Like jewels on her arms. 

What mean the gladness of the plain. 

This joy of eve and morn, 
The mirth that shakes the beard of 
grain 

And yellow locks of corn ? 

Ah ! eyes may well be full of tears. 
And hearts with hate are hot; 

But even-paced come round the years, 
And Nature changes not. 

She meets with smiles our bitter grief, 
With songs our groans of pain; 

She mocks with tint of flower and 
leaf 
The war-field's crimson stain. 

Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear 
Her sweet thanksgiving-psalm; 

Too near to God for doubt or fear. 
She shares the eternal calm. 

She knows the seed lies safe below 
The fires that blast and burn; 

For all the tears of blood we sow 
She waits the rich return. 

She sees with clearer eye than ours 
The good of suffering born , — 

The hearts that blossom like her 
flowers, 
And ripen like her corn. 

Oh, give to us, in times like these. 

The vision of her eyes; 
And make her fields and fruited trees 

Our golden prophecies I 



THE PROCLAMATION 



419 



Oh, give to us her finer ear ! 

Above this stormy din, 
We too would hear tlie bells of cheer 

Ring peace and freedom in. 



HYMN 

SUNG AT CHRISTMAS BY THE SCHOLARS 

OF ST. Helena's island, s. c. 

Oh, none in all the world before 

Were ever glad as we ! 
We're free on Carolina's shore. 

We're all at home and free. 

Thou Friend and Helper of the poor. 
Who suffered for our sake, 

To open every prison door, 
And every yoke to break ! 

Bend low Thy pitying face and 
mild, 
And help us sing and pray ; 
The hand that blessed the little 
child, 
Upon our foreheads lay. 

We hear no more the driver's horn. 
No more the whip we fear. 

This holy day that saw Thee born 
Was never half so dear. 

The very oaks are greener clad. 
The waters brighter smile; 

Oh, never shone a day so glad 
On sweet St. Helen's Isle. 

We praise Thee in our songs to-day. 
To Thee in prayer we call. 

Make swift the feet and straight the 
way 
Of freedom unto all. 

Come once again, O blessed Lord ! 

Come walking on the sea ! 
And let the mainlands hear the word 

That sets the island free ! 



THE PROCLAMATION 

Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the 

herds 
Of Ballymena, wakened with these 

words; 



"Arise, and flee 
Out from the land of bondage, and be 
free!" 

Glad us a soul in pain, who hears from 
heaven 

The angels singing of his sins for- 
given. 
And, wondering, sees 

His prison opening to their golden 
keys, 

He rose a man who laid him down a 

slave, 
Shook from his locks tiie ashes of the 

grave, 
And outward trod 
Into the glorious liberty of God. 

He cast the symbols of his shame 
away; 

And, passing where the sleeping Mil- 
cho lay, 
Thougli back and limb 

Smarted with wrong, he prayed, 
"God pardon him!" 

So went he forth; but in God's time 

he came 
To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame; 

And, dying, gavi' 
The land a saint that lost him as a 

slave. 

O dark, sad millions, patiently and 

dinnb 
Waiting for God, your hour at last 

has come. 
And freedom's song 
Breaks the long silence of your night, 

of wrong ! 

Arise and flee! shake off the vile re- 
straint 
Of ages; l)ut, Uke Hallymena's saint. 

The oppressor spare. 
Heap only on his head the coals of 
prayer. 

Go forth, like him! like him return 

again. 
To bless the land wiiereon in bitter 

pain 
Ye toiled at first, 
And heal with freedom what your 

slavery cursed. 



420 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



ANNIVERSARY POEM 

Read before the Alumni of the Friends' 
Yearly Meeting School, at the Annual Meet- 
iiijr at Newport, K. I., 15th 6th mo., 1863. 

Once more, dear friends, you meet 
beneath 
A clouded sky : 
Not yet the sword has found its 

sheath, 
And on the sweet spring airs the 
breath 
Of war floats by. 



Yet 



not from the 



trouble springs 

ground, 
Nor pain from chance; 
The Eternal order circles round, 
And wave an ' storm find mete and 
bound 
In Providence. lo 

Full long our feet the flowery ways 

Of peace have trod, 
Content with creed and garb and 

phrase : 
A harder path in earlier days 

Led up to God. 

Too cheaply truths, once purchased 
dear. 

Are made our own; 
Too long the world has smiled to hear 
Our boast of full corn in the ear 

By others sown; 20 

To see us stir the martyr fires 

Of long ago, 
And wrap our satisfied desires 
In the singed mantles that our sires 

Have dropped below. 

But now the cross our worthies bore 

On us is laid; 
Profession's quiet sleep is o'er. 
And in the scale of truth once more 

Our faith is weighed. 30 

The cry of innocent blood at last 

Is calling down 
An answer in the whirlwind-blast, 
The thunder and the shadow cast 

From Heaven's dark frown. 



The land is red with judgments. 
Stands guiltless forth ? 



Who 



Have we been faithful as we knew, 
To God and to our brother true, 

To Heaven and Earth ? 40 

How faint, through din of merchandise 

And count of gain. 
Have seemed to us the captive's cries ! 
How far away the tears and sighs 

Of souls in pain ! 

This day the fearful reckoning comes 

To each and all; 
We hear amidst our peaceful homes 
The summons of the conscript drums. 

The bugle's call. 50 

Our path is plain; the war-net draws 

Round us in vain, 
While, faithful to the Higher Cause, 
We keep our fealty to the laws 

Through patient pain. 

The levelled gun, the battle-brand, 

We may not take: 
But, calmly loyal, we can stand 
And suffer with our suffering land 

For conscience' sake. 60 

Why ask for ease where all is pain ? 

Shall we alone 
Be left to add our gain to gain. 
When over Armageddon's plain 

The trump is blown ? 

To suffer well is well to serve; 

Safe in our Lord 
The rigid lines of law shall curve 
To spare us; from our heads shall 
swerve 

Its smiting sword. 70 

And light is mingled with the gloom. 

And joy with grief; 
Divinest compensations come, 
Through thorns of judgment mercies 
bloom 

In sweet relief. 

Thanks for our privilege to bless. 

By word and deed, 
The widow in her keen distress, 
The childless and the fatherless, 

The hearts that bleed ! " 80 

For fields of duty, opening wide, 
Where all our powers 



BARBARA FRIETCHIE 



421 



Are tasked the eager steps to guide 
Of millions on a path untried: 
The slave is ours ! 

Ours by traditions dear and old, 

Which make the race 
Our wards to cherish and uphold, 
And cast their freedom in the mould 

Of Christian grace. 90 

And we may tread the sick-bed floors 

Where strong men pine, 
And, down the groaning corridors, 
Pour freely from our lil^eral stores 
The oil and wine. 

Who murmurs that in these dark 
days 

His lot is cast ? 
God's hand within the shadow lays 
The stones whereon His gates of praise 

Shall rise at last. 100 

Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched 
Hand! 
Nor stint, nor stay; 
The years have never dropped their 

sand 
On mortal issue vast and grand 
As ours to-day. 

Already, on the sable ground 

Of man's despair 
Is Freedom's glorious picture found, 
With all its dusky hands unbound 

Upraised in prayer. no 

Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice 

And pain and loss, 
When God shall wipe the weeping 

eyes. 
For suffering give the victor's prize, 

The crown for cross ! 



BARBARA FRIETCHIE 

Up from the meadows rich with corn, 
Clear in the cool September morn, 

The clustered spires of Frederick stand 
Green-walled by the hills of Mary- 
land. 

Round about them orchards sweep, 
Apple and peach tree fruited deep, 



Fair as the garden of the Lord 
To the eyes of the famished rebel 
horde, 

On that pleasant morn of the early fall 
When Lee marched over the moun- 
tain-wall; 10 

Over the mountains winding down. 
Horse and foot, into Frederick town. 

Forty flags with their silver stars, 
Forty flags with their crimson liars, 

Flapped in the morning wind : the sun 
Of noon looked down, and saw not one. 

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, 
Bowed with her fourscore years and 
ten; 

Bravest of all in Frederick town, 
She took up the flag the men hauled 
down; 20 

In her attic window the staff slie set, 
To show that one heart was loyal yet. 

Up the street came the rebel tread, 
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. 

Under his slouched hat left and right 
He glanced; the old flag met his 
sight. 

" Halt ! " — the dust-brown ranks 

stood fast, 
"Fire!" — out blazed the rifle-blast. 

It shivered the window, pane and sash ; 

It rent the banner with seam and 

gash. 30 

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff 
Dame Barbara snatched the silken 
scarf. 

She leaned far out on the window-sill, 
And shook it forth with a royal will. 

" Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, 
But spare your country's flag," she 
said. 

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, 
Over the face of the leader came; 



/ 



422 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 




" Shoot, if you must, tliis old gray head, 
But spare your country's flag ! " 



The nobler nature within him stirred 

To Ufe at that woman's deed and 

word; 40 

" Who touches a hair of yon sray head 
Dies hke a dog ! March on ! " he said. 

All day long througli Frederick street 
Sounded the tread of marching feet: 



All day long that free flag tost 
Over the heads of the rebel host. 

Ever its torn folds rose and fell 

On the loyal winds that loved it well; 

And through 
Shone over 
night. 



THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN DK MAlii^ 42^ 



Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er, 
And the Rebel rides on his raids no 
more. 

Honor to her ! and let a tear 

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. 

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave. 
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave ! 

Peace and order and beauty draw 
Round thy symbol of light and law; 

And ever the stars above look down 
On thy stars below in Frederick 
town ! 60 



WHAT THE BIRDS SAID 

The birds against the April wind 
Flew northward, singing as they flew ; 

They sang, '' The land we leave behind 
Has swords for corn-blades, blood 
for dew." 

"O wild-birds, flying from the South, 
What saw and lieard ye, gazing 
down?" 
"We saw the mortar's upturned 
mouth, 
The sickened camp, the blazing 
town ! 

" Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps, 

We saw your march-worn children 

die; 1° 

In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps 
We saw your dead uncofiined lie. 

" We heard the starving prisoner's sighs 
And saw, from hue and trench, your 
sons 

Follow our flight witli home-sick eyes 
Beyond the battery's smoking guns. ' ' 

" And heard and saw ye only wrong 

And pain," I cried, " O wing-worn 

flocks?" 

"We heard," they sang, "the freed- 

man's song, '" 

The crash of Slavery's broken locks ! 



"We saw h-vn: \\~ 
The -vro^i^oT. 
spu;u<Ki 



States 
mischief 



As, crowding Freedom'.s anifilo gates-, 
The loiiiT-cstraiiged "■: st re- 
turnea. 

"O'er dusky faces, seamed and old. 
And liands horn-hard with unpaid 
toil. 

With liope in every rustling fold, 
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil. 

"And struggling up through somids 
accursed, 
A grateful murmur clomb the air; 30 
A whisper scarcely heard at first. 
It filled the listening heavens with 
prayer. 

" And sweet and far, as from a star. 
Replied a voice which shall not cease, 

Till, drowning all the noise of war, 
It sings the blessed song of peace 1 " 

So to me, in a doubtful day 

Of chill and slowly greening spring. 
Low stooping from the cloudy gray. 

The wild-birds sang or seemed to 
sing. 40 

They vanished in the misty air, 

The song went with them in their 
flight; 

But lo ! they left the sunset fair. 
And in the evening there was light. 



THE MANTLE OF ST. JOHN 
DE MATHA 

A LEGEND OF " THE RED, WHITE, AND 
BLUE," A.D. 1154-1864 

A STRONG and mighty Angel, 

Calm, terrible, and bright, 
The cross in blended red and blue 

Upon his mantle white ! 

Two captives by him kneeling. 

Each on his broken chain. 
Sang praise to God who raiseth 

Tlie dead to life again ! 

Dropping his cross-wrought mantle, 
"Wear this," the Angel said; 10 

"Take thou, O Freedom's priest, its 
sign, — 
The white, the blue, and red." 



424 
Then , 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



.»hn de Matha 

...r'h thi':- T ord Christ 



gave, 



And begged through all the land of 
France 
The ransom of the slave. 

The gates of tower and castle 

Before him open flew, 
The drawbridge at liis coming fell. 

The door-bolt backward drew. 20 

For all men owned his errand. 
And paid his righteous tax; 

And the hearts of lord and peasant 
Were in his hands as wax. 

At last, outbound from Tunis, 
His bark her anchor weighed. 

Freighted with seven-score Christian 
souls 
Whose ransom he had paid. 

But, torn by Paynim hatred, 

Her sails in tatters hung; 30 

And on the wild waves, rudderless, 
A shattered hulk she swung. 

" God save us ! " cried the captain, 
" For naught can man avail; 

Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks 
Her rudder and her sail ! 

" Behind us are the Moormen; 

At sea we sink or strand: 
There's death upon the water, 

Tliere's death upon the land ! " 40 

Then up spake John de Matha: 
" God's errands never fail ! 

Take thou the mantle wliich I wear. 
And make of it a sail." 

They raised the cross-wrought man- 
tle, 

The blue, the white, the red; 
And straight before the wind off-shore 

The ship of Freedom sped. 

"God help us!" cried the seamen, 
"For vain is mortal skill: 50 

The good ship on a stormy sea 
Is drifting at its will." 

Then up spake John de Matha: 
" My mariners, never fear 1 



The Lord whose breath has filled her 
sail 
May well our vessel steer!" 

So on through storm and darkness 
They drove for weary hours; 

And lo ! the third gray morning shone 
On Ostia's friendly towers. 60 

And on the walls the watchers 
The ship of mercy knew, — 

They knew far off its holy cross. 
The red, the white, and blue. 

And the bells in all the steeples 

Rang out in glad accord, 
To welcome home to Christian soil 

The ransomed of the Lord. 

So runs the ancient legend 

By bard and painter told; 70 

And lo ! the cycle rounds again, 

The new is as the old ! 

With rudder foully broken, 
And sails by traitors torn, 

Our country on a midnight sea 
Is waiting for the morn. 

Before her, nameless terror; 

Behind, the pirate foe; 
The clouds are black above her, 

The sea is white below. 80 

The hope of all who suffer. 
The dread of all who wrong, 

She drifts in darkness and in storm, 
How long, O Lord! how long? 

But courage, O my mariners ! 

Ye shall not suffer wreck. 
While up to God the freedman's prayers 

Are rising from your deck. 

Is not your sail the banner 

Which God hath blest anew, 90 

The mantle that De Matha wore, 

The red, the white, the blue? 

Its hues are all of heaven, — 

The red of sunset's dye. 
The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud, 

The blue of morning's sky. 

Wait cheerily, then, O mariners, 
For daylight and for land; 



I 



HYMN 



425 



The breath of God is in your sail, 
Your rudder is His hand. 



Sail on, sail on, deep-freighted 
With blessings and with hopes; 

The saints of old with shadowy hands 
Are pulling at your ropes. 

Behind ye holy martyrs 
Uplift the palm and crown; 

Before ye unborn ages send 
Their benedictions down. 

Take heart from John de Matha ! — 
God's errands never fail ! no 

Sweep ^on through storm and darkness, 
The thunder and the hail ! 

Sail on ! The morning cometh, 
The port ye yet shall win; 

And all the bells of God shall ring 
The good ship bravely in ! 

LAUS DEO! 

ON HEARING THE BELLS RING ON THE 
PASSAGE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL 
AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY 

It is done ! 
Clang of bell and roar of gun 

Send the tidings up and down. 
How the belfries rock and r^'i ', 
How the great guns, peal on peal, 

Fling the joy from town to -'v.n ! 

Ring, O bells !_ 
Every stroke exultinjs: tells 

Of the burial hour of crime. 

Loud and long, tfiat all may hear, 10 
Ring for every listening ear 

Of Eternity an !iiue! 

Let ua ]» ■ '^el: 
God's own voire is in tl):*t ;' •^' 

And this spot is holy grou/ui. 
Lord, forgiv- us! What aiv; wc, 
That our eyes thi^ glory sco, 

That our ears have heard the sound ! 

For the Lord 

On the whirl vv'ind i.- u-broad; 20 

in the eaHh.iuake He las spoken; 

He has suiitten with His thunder 

The iron wv''^ .iSuider, 
And the gates oV brtss are broken 1 



Loud and long 
Lift the old exulting song; 

Sing with Miriam by the sea. 
He has cast the mighty do^vn; 
Horse and rider sink and drown; 

" He hath triumphed gloriously ! " 30 

Did we dare, 

In our agony of prayer, 
Ask for more than He has done ? 

When was ever His right hand 

Over any time or land 
Stretched as now beneath the sun ? 

How they pale, 
Ancient myth and song and tale, 

In this wonder of our days. 

When the cri'^l rod of war 40 

Blossoms ^A Jiite with righteous law, 

And the wruth of nii 's praise! 

Bl )tted oat! 

All wii !iin and all about 
Shall d fresher life begin; 

Freer breathe the universe 

As it rolls it.s heavy curse 
On the dead and buried sin ! 

It is done ! 
In the circuit of the sun 

Shall tlie sor.nd thereof go forth". 
It shall Hid the f>ad rejoice, 
It shall g "e the dumb a voice. 

It shall ^^elt \v "^ch jc- the earth : 

ling and swing, 
It^t of joy ! ^'11 morning's wing 
S'V d the song ■ aise abn^ad ! 
' lb a sou; ' broken cliains 

the n;i ~ Jiat He reigns, 
A iio alone is Lord and God ! 60 

HYMN ' 

FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCI- 
PATION AT NfiWBURYPORT 

Not unto us who did but seek 
Tlio word that burned within to speak, 
Not unto ni« this day belong 
The triamph and exultant song. 

Upon us fell in early youth 
TIkj burden of unwelcome truth. 
And left us, weak and frail and few, 
T xC censor's painful work to do. 




426 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 




An Old House in Newburyport 



Thenceforth our life a fight became, 
The air we breathed wis hot with 
blame; 10 

For not with gauged and softened tone 
We made the bondman's ^ailH^^urown. 

We bore, as Freedom's hope f<^p^n, 
The private hate, the public scovv ; 
Yet held through all the paths vve 
trod L , 

Our faith in man and trust in God. v 

We prayed and hoped; but still, 

with awe, 
Tlie coming of the sword we saw; 
We heard the nearing steps of doom. 
We saw the sliade of things to come. 20 

In grief whicli tliey alone can feel 
Who from a mother's wrong appeal, 
With blended lines of fear and hope 
We cast our country's lioroscope. 

For still within her house of life 
We marked the hirid sign of strife, 
And, poisoning antl imbittering all, 
We saw the star of Wormwood fall. 



Deep as our love for her became 
Our hate of all that wrought her 
shame, 30 

And if, thereby, with tongue and pen 
We erred, — we were but mortal men. 

We hoped for peace; our eyes survey 
The blood-red dawn of Freedom's 

day: 
We prayed for love to loose the chain; 
'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain ! 

^or skill nor strength nor zeal of ours 
Has mined and heaved the hostile 

^ towers; 
Not uy our hands is turned the key 
That sete the sighing captives free. 40 

A redder sea than Egypt's wave 
Is piled and parted for the slave; 
A darker ck)ud moves on in light; 
A fiercer fire is guide by night ! 

The praise, OT^ord! is Thine alone, 
In Thy own way. Thy work is done ! 
Our poor gifts at Thy f^^t we cast, 
To whom be glory^, first and last ! 



TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS 



427 



AFTER THE WAR 

THE PEACE AUTUMN 

WRITTEN FOR THE ESSEX COUNTY 
AGRICULTURAL FESTIVAL, 1865 

Thank God for rest, where none mo- 
lest, 

And none can make afraid; 
For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest 

Beneath the homestead shade ! 

Bring pike and gun, the sword's red 
scourge. 
The negro's broken cliains. 
And beat them at the blacksmith's 
forge 
To ploughshares for our plains. 

Alike henceforth our hills of snow, 
And vales where cotton flowers; lo 

All streams that flow, all winds that 
blow. 
Are Freedom's motive-powers. 

Henceforth to Labor's chivalry 

Be knightly honors paid; 
For nobler than the sword's shall be 

The sickle's accolade. 

Build up an altar to the Lord, 

O grateful hearts of ours ! 
And shape it of the greenest sward 

That ever drank the showers. 20 

Lay all the bloom of gardens there. 
And there the orchard fruits; 

Bring golden grain from sun and air, 
From earth her goodly roots. 

There let our banners droop and flow, 

The stars uprise and fall; 
Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow. 

Let sighing breezes call. 

Their names let hands of horn and tan 
And I'ough-shod feet applaud, ^o 

Who died to make the slave a man. 
And link with toil reward. 

There let the common heart keep 
time 

To such an anthem sung 
As never swelled on poet's rhyme. 

Or thrilled on singer's tongue. 



Song of our burden and relief, 

Of peace and long annoy; 
The pa.ssion of our mighty grief 

And our exceeding joy ! 40 

A song of prai.se to Him who filled 
The harvests sown in tears, 

And gave each field a double yield 
To feed our battle-years ! 

A song of faith that trusts the end 
To match the good begun. 

Nor doubts the power of Love to 
blend 
The hearts of men as one ! 



TO THE THIRTY-NINTH CON- 
GRESS 

O PEOPLE-rHOSF:N ! are ye not 
Likewise the chosen of the Lord, 
To do His will and speak His word ? 

From the loud thunder-storm of war 
Not man alone hath called ve forth, 
But He, the God of all the earth ! 

The torch of vengeance in your hands 
He quenches; unto Him belongs 
The solemn recompen.se of wrongs. 

Enough of l)lood the land has seen. 10 
And not by cell or gallow.s-stair 
Shall ye tlie way of Gotl prepare. 

Say to the pardon-seekers: Keep 
Your manhood, bend no suppliant 

knees. 
Nor palter with unworthy pleas. 

Above your voices sounds the wail 
Of starving men; we shut in vain 
Our eyes to Pillow's gha.stly .stain. 

What words can drown that bitter 

cry ? 
What tears wash out the stam of 

death? 'o 

What oaths confirm your broken 

faith? 

From vou alone the guaranty 

Of linion. freedom, peace, we cl:um; 
We urge no concjueror's terms of 
shame. 



428 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



Alas! no victor's pride is ours; 
We bend above our triumphs won 
Like David o'er his rebel son. 

Be men, not beggars. Cancel all 
By one brave, generous action; 

trust 
Your better instincts, and.be just! 

Make all men peers before the law, 31 
Take hands from off the negro's 

throat. 
Give black and white an equal vote. 

Keep all your forfeit lives and lands, 
But give the common law's redress 
To labor's utter nakedness. 

Revive the old heroic will; 

Be in the right as brave and strong 
As ye have proved yourselves in 
wrong. 

Defeat shall then be victory, 40 

Your loss the wealth of full amends. 
And hate be love, and foes be friends. 

Then ]:)uried l)e the dreadful past, 
Its common slain be mourned, and 

let 
All memories soften to regret. 

Then shall the Union's mother-heart 
Her lost and wandering ones recall. 
Forgiving and restoring all, — 

And Freedom break her marble trance 
Above the Capitolian dome, 50 

Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome 
home ! 



THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG 

In the old Hebrew myth the lion's 
frame, 
So terril)le alive, 
Bleached by the desert's sun and 
wind, l:>ecame 
The wandering wild bees' hive; 
And he who, lone and naked-handed, 
tore 
Those jaws of death apart, 
In after time drew forth their honeyed 
store 
To strengthen his strong heart. 



Dead seemed the legend: but it only 
slept 
To wake beneath our sky ; 
Just on the spot whence ravening 
Treason crept 
Back to its lair to die, 
Bleeding and torn from Freedom's 
mountain bounds, 
A stained and shattered drum 
Is now the hive where, on their flow- 
ery rounds. 
The wild bees go and come. 

Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel, 

They wander wide and far, 
Along green hillsides, sown with shot 
and shell. 

Through vales once choked with war. 
The low reveille of their battle-drum 

Disturbs no morning prayer: 
With deeper peace in summer noons 
their hum 

Fills all the drowsy air. 

And Samson's riddle is our own to-day. 

Of sweetness from the strong, 
Of union, peace, and freedom plucked 
away 
From the rent jaws of wrong. 
From Treason's death we draw a 
purer life. 
As, from the l^east he slew, 
A sweetness sweeter for his bitter 
strife 
The old-time athlete drew 1 



HOWARD AT ATLANTA 

Right in the track where Sherman 

Ploughed liis red furrow, 
Out of the narrow cabin, 

Up from the cellar's burrow, 
Gathered the little black people. 

With freedom newly dowered. 
Where, beside their Northern teacher. 

Stood the soldier, Howard. 

He listened and heard the children 

Of the poor and long-enslaved 10 
Reading the words of Jesus, 

Singing the songs of David. 
Behold ! — the dumb lips speaking, 

The blind eyes seeing ! 
Bones of the Prophet's vision 

Warmed into being ! 



THE JUBILEE SINGERS 



429 



Transformed he saw them passing 

Their new hfe's portal ! 
Ahnost it seemed the mortal 

Put on the immortal. 20 

No more with the beasts of burden, 

No more with stone and clod, 
But crowned with glory and honor 

In the image of God ! 

There was the human chattel 

Its manhood taking; 
There, in each dark, bronze statue, 

A soul was waking ! 
The man of many battles, 

With tears his eyelids pressing, 30 
Stretched over those dusky foreheads 

His one-armed blessing. 

And he said: " Who hears can never 

Fear for or doubt you; 
What shall I tell the children 

Up North about you?" 
Then ran round a whisper, a murmur. 

Some answer devising; 
And a little boy stood up: "General, 

Tell 'em we're rising!" 40 

O black boy of Atlanta ! 

But half was spoken: 
The slave's chain and the master's 

Alike are broken. 
The one curse of the races 

Held both in tether: 
They are rising, — all are rising, 

The black and white together ! 



so 



O brave men and fair women ! 

Ill comes of hate and scorning: 
Shall the dark faces only 

Be turned to morning ? — 
Make Time your sole avenger, 

All-healing, all-redressing; 
Meet Fate half-way, and make it 

A joy and blessing I 



THE EMANCIPATION GROUP 

BOSTON, 1879 

Amidst thy sacred effigies 

Of old renown give place, 
O city. Freedom-loved ! to ins 

Whose hand unchained a race. 

Take the worn frame, that rested not 
Save in a martyr's grave; 



The care-lined face, that none forgot, 
Bent to the kneeling slave. 

Let man be free! The mighty word 
He spake was not his own; 

An impulse from the Highest stirred 
These chiselled lips alone. 

The cloudy sign, the fiery guide, 

Along his pathway ran. 
And Nature, through his voice, denied 

The ownership of man. 

We rest in peace where these sad eyes 
Saw peril, strife, and pain; 

His was the nation's sacrifice, 
And ours the priceless gain. 

O symbol of God's will on earth 

As it is done above! 
Bear witness to the cost and worth 

Of justice and of love. 

Stand in thy place and testify 

To coming ages long, 
That truth is stronger than a lie, 

And righteousness than wrong. 



THE JUBILEE SINGERS 

Voice of a people suffering long. 
The pathos of their mournful .song. 
The sorrow of their night of wrong I 

Their cry like that which Israel gave, 
A prayer for one to guide and save. 
Like Moses by the Red Sea's wave ! 

The stem accord her timbrel lent 
To Miriam's note of triumph sent 
O'er Egypt's sunken armament ! 

The tramp that startled camp and 

town. 
And shook the walls of slavery down. 
The spectral march of old John Brown ! 

The storm that swept through battle- 

davs. 
The triuinph after long delays. 
The bondmen giving God the praise !. 

Voice of a ran.somed race, sing on 
Till Freedom's every right is won, 
And slavery's every wrong undone 1 



43° 



ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS 



GARRISON 

The storm and peril overpast, 

The hounding hatred shamed and 
still, 
Go, soul of freedom ! take at last 
The place which thou alone canst 
fill. 

Confirm the lesson taught of old — 
Life saved for self is lost, while they 

Who lose it in His service hold 
The lease of God's eternal day. 

Not for thyself, but for the slave 
Thy words of thunder shook the 
world; 
No selfish griefs or hatred gave 

The strength wherewith thy bolts 
were hurled. 

From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew 
We heard a tender under song; 

Thy very wrath from pity grew. 
From love of man thy hate of 
wrong. 

Now past and present are as one; 
The life below is life above; 



Thy mortal years have but begun 
Thy immortality of love. 

With somewhat of thy lofty faith 
We lay thy outworn garment by, 

Give death but what belongs to death, 
And life the life that cannot die! 

Not for a soul like thine the calm 
Of selfish ease and joys of sense; 

But duty, more than crown or 
palm, 
Its own exceeding recompense. 

Go up and on ! thy day well done. 
Its morning promise well fulfilled, 

Arise to triumphs yet unwon. 

To holier tasks that God has willed. 

Go, leave behind thee all that mars 
The work below of man for man; 

With the white legions of the stars 
Do service such as angels can. 

Wherever wrong shall right deny 
Or suffering spirits urge their plea. 

Be tliine a voice to smite the lie, 
A hand to set the captive free ! 

May 24, 1879. 




" Where in mist the rock is liiding, 
And tl)e sharp reef lurks below " 



(See p. ma.) 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN 
TIME 

The Quaker of the olden time ! 

How calm and firm and true, 
Unspotted by its wrong and crime, 

He walked the dark earth through. 
The lust of power, the love of gain. 

The thousand lures of sin 
Around him, had no power to stain 

The purity within. 

With that deep insight which detects 

All great things in the small. 
And knows how each man's life affects 

The spiritual life of all, 
He walked by faith and not by sight, 

By love and not by law; 
The presence of the wrong or right 

He rather felt than saw. 



He felt tiiat wrong with wroim par- 
takes. 

That nothing stands alone, 
That whoso gives the motive, makes 

His brother's sin liis own. 
And, pausing not for doubtful 
choice 

Of evils great or small, 
He listened to that inward voice 

Which called away from all. 

O Spirit of that early day, 

So pure and strong and true, 
Be with us in the narrow way 

Our faithful fathers knew 
Give strengtii the evil to forsake, 

The cross of Truth to bear, 
And love and reverent fear to 
make 

Our daily lives a prayer! 



432 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



DEMOCRACY 

" All things whatsoever ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye even so to 
them." — Matthew vii. 12. 

Bearer of Freedom's holy light, 
Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod. 

The foe of all which pains the sight. 
Or wounds the generous ear of God ! 

Beautiful yet thy temples rise. 
Though there profaning gifts are 
thrown; 

And fires unkindled of the skies 
Are glaring round thy altar-stone. 

Still sacred, though thy name be 

breathed 

By those whose hearts thy truth 

deride; lo 

And garlands, plucked from thee, are 

wreathed 

Around the haughty brows of Pride. 

Oh, ideal of my boyhood's time ! 

The faith in which my father stood. 
Even when the sons of Lust and 
Crime 
Had stained thy peaceful courts 
with blood ! 

Still to those courts my footsteps turn, 
For through the mists which darken 
there, 

I see the flame of Freedom burn, — 
The Kebla of the patriot's prayer !2o 

The generous feeling, pure and warm. 
Which owns the right of all divine; 

The pitying heart, the helping arm. 
The prompt self-sacrifice, are thine. 

Beneath thy broad, impartial eye. 
How fade the lines of caste and 
birth ! 

How equal in their suffering lie 
The groaning multitudes of earth ! 

Still to a stricken brother true, 

Whatever clime hath nurtured him; 

As stooped to heal the wounded Jew 31 
The worshipper of Gerizim. 

By misery unrepelled, unawed 

By pomp or power, thou seest a 
Man 



In prince or peasant, slave or lord, 
Pale priest, or swarthy artisan. 

Through all disguise, form, place, or 
name. 

Beneath the flaunting robes of sin, 
Through poverty and squalid shame. 

Thou lookest on the man within. 40 

On man, as man, retaining yet, 

Howe'er debased, and soiled, and 
dim. 

The crown upon his forehead set. 
The immortal gift of God to him. 

And there is reverence in thy look; 
For that frail form which mortals 
wear 
The Spirit of the Holiest took. 

And veiled His perfect brightness 
there. 

Not from the shallow babbling fount 
Of vain philosophy thou art; 50 

He who of old on Syria's Mount 
Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the lis- 
tener's heart, 

In holy words which cannot die. 
In thoughts which angels leaned to 
know. 

Proclaimed thy message from on high, 
Thy mission to a world of woe. 

That voice's echo hath not died ! 

From the blue lake of Galilee, 
And Tabor's lonely mountain-side. 

It calls a struggling world to thee. 60 

Thy name and watchword o'er this 
land 

I hear in every breeze that stirs. 
And round a thousand altars stand 

Thy banded party worshippers. 

Not to these altars of a day. 
At party's call, my gift I bring; 

But on thy olden shrine I lay 
A freeman's dearest offering: 

The voiceless utterance of his will, — 

His pledge to Freedom and to 

Truth, ;o 

That manhood's heart remembers still 
The homage of his generous youth. 

Election Day, 1843. 



THE GALLOWS 



433 




•' From the blue lake of Galilee, 
It calls a struggling world to thee 

THE GALLOWS 



WRITTEN ON READING PAMPHLETS 
PUBLISHED BY CLERGYMEN AGAINST 
THE ABOLITION OF THE GALLOWS 



The suns of eighteen centuries have 
shone 
Since the Redeemer walked with 
man, and made 
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of 
stone, 
And mountain moss, a pillow for 
His head; 
And He, who wandered with the pea- 
sant Jew, 
" And broke with publicans the bread 
of shame. 
And drank with blessings, in His 
Father's name, 
The water which Samaria's outcast 

drew, 
Hathnow His temples upon every shore, 
Altar and shrine and priest; and in- 
cense dim '° 
Evermore rising, with low prayer 
and hymn, 



From lips which press the temple's 

marble floor, 
Or kiss tiie gilded sign of the dread 

cross He bore. 



Yet as of old, when, meeklv "doing 
good," 

He fed a blind and selfish multi- 
tude, 

And even the poor companions of His 
lot 

With their dim eartiily vision knew 
Him not, 
How ill are His high teachings un- 
derstood ! 

Where He hath spoken Lil)erty. the 
priest 
At His o^vn altar binds the chain 
anew; '" 

Where He hath bidden to Life's equal 
feast, 
The starving many wait upon the 
few ; 

Where He hath spoken Peace, His 
name hath l)een 

The loudest war-cry of contending 
men ; 



434 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Priests, pale with vigils, in His name 

liave blessed 
The unsheathed sword, and laid the 

spear in rest. 
Wet the war-banner with their sacred 

wine. 
And crossed its blazon with the holy 

sign; , , , 

Yea, in His name who bade the errmg 

live, 

And daily taught His lesson, to for- 
give ! 30 
Twisted the cord and edged the 
murderous steel; 

And, with His words of mercy on their 
lips. 

Hung gloating o'er the pincers' burn- 
ing grips, 
And the grim horror of the straining 
wheel; 

Fed the slow flame which gnawed the 
victim's limb. 

Who saw before his searing eyeballs 
swim 
The image of their Christ in cruel 
zeal. 

Through the black torment-smoke, 
held mockingly to him ! 



Ill 



The blood which mingled with the 

desert sand. 

And beaded with its red and ghastly 

dew 40 

The vines and olives of the Holy Land ; 

The shrieking curses of the hunted 

Jew; 

The white-sown bones of heretics, 

where'er 
They sank beneath the Crusade's holy 

spear, 
Goa's dark dungeons, Malta's sea- 
washed cell. 
Where with the hymns the ghostly 

fathers sung 
Mingled the groans by subtle tor- 
ture wrung, 
Heaven's anthem blending with the 

shriek of hell ! 
The midnight of Bartholomew, the 
stake 
Of Smithfield, and that thrice-ac- 
cursed flame 50 
Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's 
lake; 



New England's scaffold, and the 

priestly sneer 
Which mocked its victims in that 

hour of fear. 
When guilt itself a human tear might 

claim, — 
Bear witness, O Thou wronged and 

merciful One ! 
That Earth's most hateful crimes have 

in Thy name been done ! 



IV 



Thank God ! that I have lived to see 

the time 
When the great truth begins at last 

to find 
An utterance from the deep heart of 

mankind. 
Earnest and clear, that all Revenge is 

Crime, 60 

That man is holier than a creed, that 

all 
Restraint upon him must consult 

his good, 
Hope's sunshine linger on his prison 

wall. 
And Love look in upon his solitude. 
The beautiful lesson which our Saviour 

taught 
Through long, dark centuries its way 

hath wrought 
Into the common mind and popular 

thought; 
And words, to which by Galilee's lake 

shore 
The humble fishers listened with 

hushed oar. 
Have found an echo in the general 

heart, 70 

And of the public faith become a liv- 
ing part. 



Who shall arrest this tendency ? Bring 

back 
The cells of Venice and the bigot's 

rack ? 
Harden the softening human heart 

again 
To cold indifference to a brother's pain? 
Ye most unhappy men ! who, turned 

away 
From the mild sunshine of the Gospel 

day, 



TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND 



435 



Grope in the shadows of Man's twi- 
light time, 

What mean ye, that with ghoul-like 
zest ye brood. 

O'er those foul altars streaming with 

warm blood, 80 

Permitted in another age and clime? 

Why cite that law with which the 
bigot Jew 

Rebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he 
knew 

No evil in the Just One? Wherefore 
turn 

To the dark, cruel past? Can ye not 
learn 

From the pure Teacher's life how 
mildly free 

Is the great Gospel of Humanity? 

The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and 
no more 

Mexitli's altars soak with human gore. 

No more the ghastly sacrifices smoke 

Through the green arches of the Dru- 
id's oak; 91 

And ye of milder faith, with your high 
claim 

Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest 
name. 

Will ye become the Druids of our 
time ! 

Set up your scaffold-altars in our 
land. 

And, consecrators of Law's darkest 
crime, 
Urge to its loathsome work the 
hangman's hand? 

Beware, lest human nature, roused at 
last, 

From its peeled shoulder your encum- 
brance cast, 
And, sick to loathing of your cry for 
blood, ]°o 

Rank ye with those who led their vic- 
tims round 

The Celt's red altar and the Indian's 
mound. 
Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, a 
pagan brotherhood ! 



SEED-TIME AND HARVEST 

As o'er his furrowed fields which lie 
Beneath a coldly dropping sky, 
Yet chill with winter's melted snow. 
The husbandman goes forth to sow, 



Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast 
The ventures of thy seed we ciust. 
And trust to warmer sun ami rain 
To swell the germs and fill the 
grain. 

Who calls thy glorious service hard ? 
Wlio deems it not its own nnvard ? 
Who, for its trials, counts it less 
A cause of praise and thankful- 
ness ? 

It may not be our lot to wield 
The sickle in the ripened field; 
Nor ours to hear, on summer eves, 
The reaper's song among the sheaves. 

Yet where our duty's task is wrought 
In unison with God's great thougjit, 
The near and future blend in one, 
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done ! 

And ours the grateful service whence 
Comes day by day the recompense; 
The hope, the trust, the purpose 

stayed. 
The fountain and the noonday shade. 

And were this life the utmost span. 
The only end and aim of man, 
Better the toil of fields like these 
Than waking dream and slothful ease. 

But life, though falling like our grain, 
Like that revives and springs again; 
And, early called, how lilest are they 
Who wait in heaven their harvest-tiay ! 



TO THE REFORMERS OF ENG- 
LAND 

God bless ye, brothers! in the figlit 
Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail. 

For better is your sens(> of right 
Than king-craft's trijile mail. 

Than tvrant's law, or bigot's ban. 
More mighty is vour simplest word; 

The free heart of an honest man 
Than crosier or the sword. 

Go, let your blinded Church rehearse 
Tlie lesson it has learned .so well; 10 

It moves not with its prayer or curse 
The gates of heaven or hell. 



436 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Let the State scaffold rise again; 

Did Freedom die when Russell died ? 
Forget ye how the blood of Vane 

From earth's green bosom cried ? 

The great hearts of your olden time 
Are l)eating with you, full and 
strong; 

All holy memories and sublime 

And glorious round ye throng. 20 

The bluff, bold men of Runnymede 
Are with ye still in times like these; 

The shades of England's mighty dead, 
Your cloud of witnesses ! 

The truths ye urge are borne abroad 
By every wind and every tide; 

The voice of Nature and of God 
Speaks out upon your side. 

The weapons which your hands have 
found 
Are those which Heaven itself has 
wrought, 30 

Light, Truth, and Love; 3'^our battle- 
ground 
The free, broad field of Thought. 

No partial, selfish purpose breaks 
The simple beauty of your plan. 

Nor lie from throne or altar shakes 
Your steady faith in man. 

The languid pulse of England starts 
And Iwunds beneath your words of 
power, 

The beating of her million hearts 
Is with you at this hour ! 40 

O ye who, with undoubting eyes. 
Through present cloud and gather- 
ing storm, 

Behold the span of Freedom's skies, 
And sunshine soft and warm; 

Press bravely onward ! not in vain 
Your generous trust in human-kind; 

The good which bloodshed could not 
gain 
Your peaceful zeal shall find. 

Press on ! the triumph shall be won 
Of common rights and equal laws, 50 

The glorious dream of Harrington, 
And Sidney's good old cause, 

/' 



Blessing the cotter and the crown, 
Sweetening worn labor's bitter cup; 

And, plucking not the highest down, 
Lifting the lowest up. 

Press on ! and we who may not share 
The toil or glory of your fight 

May ask, at least, in earnest prayer, 
God's blessing on the right ! 60 



THE HUMAN SACRIFICE 



Far from his close and noisome cell, 

By grassy lane and sunny stream, 
Blown clover field and strawberry 

dell. 
And green and meadow freshness, fell 

The footsteps of his dream. 
Again from careless feet the dew 

Of summer's misty morn he shook; 
Again with merry heart he threw 8 

His light line in the rippling brook. 
Back crowded all his school-day joys; 

He urged the ball and quoit again. 
And heard the shout of laughing boys 

Come ringing down the walnut glen. 
Again he felt the western breeze. 

With scent of flowers and crisping 
hay; 
And down again through wind-stirred 
trees 

He saw the quivering sunlight play. 
An angel in home's vine-hung door. 
He saw his sister smile once more; 
Once more the truant's brown-locked 
head 20 

Upon his mother's knees was laid. 
And sweetly lulled to slumber there. 
With evening's holy hymn and prayer ! 



II 



He woke. At once on heart and brain 
The present Terror rushed again; 
Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain ! 
He woke, to hear the church-tower tell 
Time's footfall on the conscious bell. 
And, shuddering, feel that clanging 

din 
His life's last hour had ushered in; 30 
To see within his prison-yard. 
Through the small window, iron 

barred, 



THE HUMAN SACRIFICE 



437 



The gallows shadow rising dim 
Between the sunrise heaven and him; 
A horror in God's blessed air; 

A blackness in his morning light; 
Like some foul devil-altar there 

Built up by demon hands at night. 

And, maddened by that evil sight, 
Dark, horrible, confused, and strange, 
A chaos of wild, weltering change, 41 
All power of check and guidance gone, 
Dizzy and bhnd, his mind swept on. 
In vain he strove to breathe a prayer, 

In vain he turned the Holy Book, 
He only heard the gallows-stair 

Creak as the wind its timbers shook. 
No dream for him of sin forgiven, 

While still that baleful spectre stood, 

With its hoarse murmur, " Blood for 

Blood!'' so 

Between him and the pitying Heaven ! 



Ill 



Low on his dungeon floor he knelt, 
And smote his breast, and on his 
chain. 
Whose iron clasp he always felt, 

His hot tears fell like rain; 
And near him, with the cold, calm look 
And tone of one whose formal part, 
Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart, 
Is measured out by rule and book. 
With placid lip and tranquil blood, 60 
The hangman's ghostly ally stood, 
Blessing with solemn text and word 
The gallows-drop and strangling cord; 
Lending the sacred Gospel's awe 
And sanction to the crime of Law. 

IV 

He saw the victim's tortured brow, 

The sweat of anguish starting there, 
The record of a nameless woe 
In the dim eye's imploring stare, 
Seen hideous through the long, 
damp hair, — 70 

Fingers of ghastlv skin and bone 
Working and writhing on the stone ! 
And heard, by mortal terror wrung 
From heaving breast and stiffened 
tongue, 
The choking sob and low hoarse 
prayer; 
As o'er his half-crazed fancy came 
A vision of the eternal flame. 



Its smoking cloud of agonies, 
Its demon worm that never dies, 
Tiie everlasting rise and fall ' 80 
Of fire-waves round the infernal wall; 
While high above that dark red flood,' 
Black, giant-like, the gallows stood;' 
Two busy fiends attending there: 
One with cold mocking rite and 

prayer. 
The other with impatient grasp. 
Tightening the death-rope's strangling 

clasp. 



The unfelt rite at length was done, 

The prayer unheard at length wjus 
said. 
An hour had passed: the noonday 
sun 00 

Smote on the features of the dead ! 
And he who stood the doomed be- 
side, 
Calm ganger of the swelling tide 
Of mortal agony and fear, 
Heeding with curious eye and ear 
Whate'er revealed the keen excess 
Of man's extremest wretchedness: 
And who in that dark anguisii saw 

An earnest of the victim's fate, 
The vengeful terrors of God's law, 100 

The kindlings of Eternal hate, 
The first drops of that fiery rain 
Which beats the dark red realm of 

pain. 
Did he uplift his earnest cries 

Against the crime of Law, which 
gave 

His brother to that fearful grave, 
Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies, 

And Faith's wliite blossoms never 
wave 
To the soft breath of Memory's sighs; 
Which sent a spirit marred and 
stained, >'° 

By fiends of sin possessoil, profaned, 
In madness and m blindness stark, 
Into the silent, unknown dark ? 
No, from the wild and shrinking dread, 
With which he saw the victim led 

Beneath the dark veil whici\ divides 
Ever the living from the dead. 

And Nature's solemn secret hides, 
The man of prayer can only draw 
New reiisons for his bloody law; no 
New faith in staving Murder's hand 
By murder at that Law's command; 



438 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Now reverence for the gallows-rope, 
As iiuiiian nature's latest hope; 
Last relic of tlie good old time, 
When Power found license for itscrime. 
And held a writliing world in check 
By that fell cord about its neck; 
Stifled Sedition's rising shout, 
Choked the young breath of Freedom 

out, 130 

And timely checked the words which 

sprung 
From Heresy's forbidden tongue; 
While in its noose of terror bound, 
The Church its chcrislied union found, 
Conforming, on the Moslem plan. 
The motley-colored mind of man. 
Not l)y the Koran and the Sword, 
But by the Bible and the Cord ! 



VI 



O Thou ! at w^hose rebuke the grave 
Back to warm life its sleeper gave, 140 
Beneath whose sad and tearful glance 
The cold and changed countenance 
Broke the still horror of its trance. 
And, waking, saw with joy above, 
A brother's face of tenderest love; 
Thou, unto whom the blind and lame, 
The sorrowing and the sin-sick came. 
And from Thy very garment's hem 
Drew life and healing unto them, 
The burden of Thy holy faith 150 

Was love and life, not hate and death; 
Man's demon ministers of pain. 

The fiends of his revenge, were sent 

From thy pure Gospel's element 
To their dark home again. 
Thy name is Love ! What, then, is he, 

Who in that name the gallows rears, 
An awful altar built to Thee, 

With sacrifice of blood and tears ? 
Oh, once again Thy healing lay 160 

On the blind eyes which knew Thee 
not, 
And let the light of Thy pure day 

Melt in upon his darkened thought. 
Soften his hard, cold heart, and show 

The po^yer which in forbearance lies, 
And let him feel that mercy now 

Is better than old sacrifice ! 

VII 

As on the White Sea's charmed shore. 
The Parsee sees his holy hill 



With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained 
o'er, 170 

Yet knows beneath them, evermore. 

The low, pale fire is quivering still, — 
So, underneath its clouds of sin. 

The heart of man retaineth yet 
Gleams of its holy origin ; 

And half-quenched stars that never 
set, 
Dim colors of its faded bow, 

And early beauty, linger there; 
And o'er its wasted desert blow^ 

Faint breathings of its morning air. 
Oh, never yet upon the scroll 181 

Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul, 

Hath Heaven inscribed " Despair!" 
Cast not the clouded gem away, 
Quench not the dim but living ray, — 

My brother man. Beware ! 
With that deep voice which from the 

skies 
Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice, 

God's angel cries. Forbear ! 



SONGS OF LABOR 

DEDICATION 

I WOULD the gift I ofTer here 

Might graces from thy favor take. 
And, seen through Friendship's at- 
mosphere, 
On softened lines and coloring, 
wear 
The unaccustomed light of beauty, for 
thy sake. 

Few leaves of Fancy's spring re- 
main: 
But what I have I give to thee. 
The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's 

plain. 
And paler flowers, the latter rain 
Calls from the westering slope of life's 
autumnal lea. 10 

Above the fallen groves of green, 
Where youth's enchanted forest 
stood. 
Dry root and mossed trunk be- 
tween, 
A sober after-growiih is seen, 
As springs the pine where falls the 
gay-leafed maple wood ! 



THE SHOEMAKERS 



439 



Yet birds will sing, and breezes play 

Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree; 

And through the bleak and wintry 

day 
It keeps its steady green alway, — 
So, even my after-thoughts may have 
a charm for thee. 20 

Art's perfect forms no moral need, 

And beauty is its own excuse. 
But for the dull and flowerless weed 
Some healing virtue still must plead, 
And the rough ore must find its honors 
in its use. 

So haply these, my simple lays 

Of homely toil, may serve to show 
The orchard bloom and tasselled 

maize 
That skirt and gladden duty's ways. 
The unsung beauty hid life's common 
things below. 30 

Haply from them the toiler, bent 

Above his forge or plough , may gain 
A manlier spirit of content. 
And feel that life is wisest spent 
Where the strong working hand makes 
strong the working brain. 

The doom which to the guilty pair 

Without the walls of Eden came. 

Transforming sinless ease to care 

And rugged toil, no more shall bear 

The burden of old crime, or mark of 

primal shame. 40 

A blessing now, a curse no more; 
Since He, whose name we breathe 
with awe. 
The coarse mechanic vesture wore, 
A poor man toiling with the poor. 
In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the 
same law. 



THE SHOEMAKERS 

Ho ! workers of the old time styled 

The Gentle Craft of Leather ! 
Young brothers of the ancient guild. 

Stand forth once more together 1 
Call out again your long array, 

In the olden merry manner ! 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 

Fling out your blazoned banner ! 



Rap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone 

How falls the polished hammer! 10 
Rap, rap! tlie measured sound has 
grown 

A quick and merry clamor. 
Now shape the sole ! now deftly curl 

The glossy vamp around it, 
And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 

Whose gentle fingers bound It ! 

For you, along the Spanish main 
^ A hundred keels are ploughing; 
For you, the Indian on the plain 

His lasso-coil is throwing; jo 

For you, deep glens with hemlock dark 

The woodman's fire is lighting; 
For you, upon the oak's gray bark, 

The woodman's axe is smiting. 

For you, from Carolina's pine 

The rosin-gum is stealing; 
For you, the dark-eyed Florentine 

Her silken skein is reeling; 
For you, the dizzy goatherd roams 

His rugged Alpine ledges; 30 

For you, round all her shepherd homes 

Bloom England's thorny hedges. 

The foremost still, by day or night, 

On moated mound or heather. 
Where'er the need of trampled right 

Brought toiling men togetlior; 
Where the free burghers from tlie wall 

Defied the mail-clad master. 
Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call, 

No craftsmen rallied faster. 40 

Let foplings sneer, let fools deride, 

Ye heed no idle scorner; 
Free hands and hearts are still your 
pride. 

And duty done your honor. 
Ye dare to trust, for honest fame, 

The jury Time empanels, 
And leave to truth oacii noble name 

Which glorifies your annals. 

Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet, 

in strong and hearty (Irrman; 50 
And Bloomfield's lay , and ( JitTord's wit, 

And patriot fame of Sherman; 
Still from his book, a mystic seer. 

The soul of Behnien teaches, 
And England's priesthood shakes to 
hear 

Of Fox's leathern breeches. 



440 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Tlie foot is yours; where'er it falls, 

It treads your well-wrought leather, 
On eartherii fioor, in marble halls 

On carpet, or on heather. 60 

Still there the sweetest charm is found 

Of matron grace or vestal's. 
As Hebe's foot bore nectar round 

Among the old celestials ! 

Rap, rap ! — your stout and bluff bro- 
gan. 

With footsteps slow and weary, 
May wander where the sky's blue 
span 

Shuts down upon the prairie. 
On Beauty's foot your slippers glance, 

By Saratoga's fountains, 70 

Or twinkle down the summer dance 

Beneath the Crystal Mountains ! 

The red brick to the mason's hand. 

The brown earth to the tiller's, 
The shoe in yours shall wealth com- 
mand. 

Like fairy Cinderella's ! 
As they who shunned the household 
maid 

Beheld tlie crown upon her. 
So all shall see your toil repaid 

With hearth and home and honor. 80 

Then let the toast be freely quaffed. 

In water cool and brimming, — 
" All honor to the good old Craft, 

Its merry men and women!" 
Call out again your long array, 

In the old time's pleasant manner: 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day. 

Fling out his blazoned banner ! 



THE FISHERMEN 

Hurrah ! the seaward breezes 

Sweep down tlie bay amain; 
Heave up, my lads, the anchor ! 

Run up the sail again ! 
Leave to the lubber landsmen 

The rail-car and the steed; 
The stars of heaven shall guide us. 

The breath of heaven sliall speed. 

P>om the hill-top looks the steeple. 
And the lighthouse from the sand; 10 

And the scattered pines are waving 
Their farewell from the land. 



One glance, my lads, behind us, 
For the homes we leave one sigh. 

Ere we take the change and chances 
Of the ocean and the sky. 

Now, brothers, for the icebergs 

Of frozen Labrador, 
Floating spectral in the moonshine. 

Along the low, black shore ! 20 

Where like snow the gannet's feath- 
ers 

On Brador's rocks are shed, 
And the noisy- murr are flying. 

Like black scuds, overhead; 

Where in mist the rock is hiding, 

And the sharp reef lurks below. 
And the wliite squall smites in sum- 
mer. 

And the autumn tempests blow; 
Where, through gray and rolling vapor. 

From evening unto morn, 30 

A thousand boats are hailing, 

Horn answering unto horn. 

Hurrah ! for the Red Island, 

With the white cross on its crown ! 
Hurrah ! for Meccatina, 

And its mountains bare and brown ! 
Where the Caribou's tall antlers 

O'er the dwarf-wood freely toss. 
And the footstep of the Mickmack 

Has no sound upon the moss. 40 

There we'll drop our lines, and gather 

Old Ocean's treasures in. 
Where'er the mottled mackerel 

Turns up a steel-dark fin. 
The sea's our field of harvest, 

Its scaly tribes our grain; 
We'll reap the teeming waters 

As at home they reap the plain I 

Our wet hands spread the carpet, 

And light the hearth of home; 50 
From our fish, as in the old time, 

The silver coin shall come. 
As the demon fled the chamber 

Where the fish of Tobit lay. 
So ours from all our dwellings 

Shall frighten Want away. 

Though the mist upon our jackets 

In the bitter air congeals. 
And our lines wind stiff and slowly 

From off the frozen reels; 60 



THE LUMBERMEN 



441 



Though the fog be dark around us, 
And the storm blow high and loud, 

We will whistle down the wild wind, 
And laugh beneath the cloud ! 

In the darkness as in daylight, 

On the water as on land, 
God's eye is looking on us. 

And beneath us is His hand ! 
Death will find us soon or later, 

On the deck or in the cot; 70 

And we cannot meet him better 

Than in working out our lot. 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! the west-wind 

Comes freshening down the bay, 
The rising sails are filling; 

Give way, my lads, give way ! 
Leave the coward landsman clinging 

To the dull earth, like a weed; 
The stars of heaven shall guide us, 70 

The breath of heaven shall speed ! 



THE LUMBERMEN 

Wildly round our woodland quarters 

Sad-voiced Autumn grieves; 
Thickly down these swelling waters 

Float his fallen leaves. 
Through the tall and naked timber, 

Column-like and old. 
Gleam the sunsets of November, 

From their skies of gold. 

O'er us, to the southland heading. 

Screams the gray wild-goose; 10 
On the night-frost sounds the treading 

Of the brindled moose. 
Noiseless creeping, while we're sleep- 
ing, , ,. 
Frost his task-work plies; 
Soon, his icy bridges heaping, 
Shall our log-piles rise. 

When, with sounds of smothered thun- 
der. 
On some night of rain. 
Lake and river break asunder 

Winter's weakened chain, 20 

Down the wild March flood shall bear 
them 
To the saw-mill's wheel. 
Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear 
them 
With his teeth of steel. 



Be it .starlight, be it moonlight, 

L\ these vales below. 
When the earliest beams of sunlight 

Streak tlie mountain's snow, 
Crisps the iioar-frost, keen and early, 

To our hurrying feet, 30 

And the forest echoes clearly 

All our blows repeat. 

Where the crystal Aml)ijejis 

Stretches broad and clear. 
And Millnoket's pine-l)lack ridges 

Hide the browsing deer: 
Where, through lakes and wide mo- 
rasses. 

Or through rocky walls, 
Swift and strong, Penobscot passes 

White with foamy falls; 40 

Where, through clouds, are glimpses 
given 

Of Katahdin's sides, — 
Rock and forest piled to heaven. 

Torn and ploughed by slides! 
Far below, the Indian trapping, 

In the sunshine warm; 
Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping 

Half the peak in storm ! 

Where are mossy carpets better 

Than the Persian weaves, 50 

And than Eastern perfumes sweeter 

Seem the fading leaves; 
And a music wild and solemn. 

From the pine-tree's height, 
Rolls its vast and sea-like volume 

On the wind of night; 

Make we here our camp of winter; 

And, through sleet and snow, 
Pitchy knot and beechen splinter 

On our hoarth .shall glow. 60 

Here, with mirth to lighten duty, 

We shall lack alone 
Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty, 

Childhood's lisping tone. 

But their hearth is brighter burning 

For our toil to-day; 
And the welcome of returning 

Shall our loss repay, 
When, like seamen from the waters, 

From the woods we come, 70 

Greeting sisters, wives, and daugh- 
ters, 

Angels of our home 1 



442 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Not for us tlie measured ringing 

From tlie village spire, 
Not for us the Sabbath singing 

Of the sweet- voiced choir; 
Ours tlie old, majestic temple, 

Where God's brightness shines 
Down the dome so grand and ample, 

Propped by lofty pines ! 8© 

Through each branch-enwoven sky- 
light. 

Speaks He in the breeze, 
As of old beneath the twilight 

Of lost Eden's trees ! 
For His ear, the inward feeling 

Needs no outward tongue; 
He can see the spirit kneeling 

While the axe is swung. 

Heeding truth alone, and turning 

From the false and dim, 90 

Lamp of toil or altar burning 

Are alike to Him. 
Strike them, comrades! Trade is 
waiting 

On our rugged toil; 
Far ships waiting for the freighting 

Of our woodland spoil ! 

Ships whose traffic links these high- 
lands, 

Bleak and cold, of ours. 
With the citron-planted islands 

Of a clime of flowers; 100 

To our frosts the tribute bringing 

Of eternal heats; 
In our lap of winter flinging 

Tropic fruits and sweets. 

Cheerly, on the axe of labor, 

Let the sunbeams dance. 
Better than the flash of sabre 

Or tlie gleam of lance ! 
Strike ! With every blow is given 

Freer sun and sky, no 

And the long-hid earth to heaven 

Looks, with wondering eye ! 

Loud behind us grow the murmurs 

Of the age to come; 
Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers, 

Bearing harvest home ! 
Here her virgin lap with treasures 

Shall the green earth fill; 
Waving wheat and golden maize-ears 

Crown each beechen hill. 120 



Keep who will the city's alleys, 

Take the smooth-shorn plain; 
Give to us the cedarn valleys, 

Rocks and hills of Maine ! 
In our North-land, wild and woody. 

Let us still have part: 
Rugged nurse and mother sturdy, 

Hold us to thy heart ! 

Oh, our free hearts beat the warmer 

For thy breath of snow; 130 

And our tread is all the firmer 

For thy rocks below. 
Freedom, hand in hand with labor, 

Walketh strong and brave; 
On the forehead of his neighbor 

No man writeth Slave ! 

Lo, the day breaks! old Katahdin's 

Pine-trees show its fires. 
While from these dim forest gardens 

Rise their blackened spires. 140 

Up, my comrades ! up and doing ! 

Manhood's rugged play 
Still renewing, bravely hewing 

Through the world our way ! 



THE SHIP-BUILDERS 

The sky is ruddy in the east, 

The earth is gray below. 
And, spectral in the river-mist, 

The ship's white timbers show. 
Then let the sounds of measured stroke 

And grating saw begin; 
The broad-axe to the gnarled oak. 

The mallet to the pin ! 

Hark ! roars the bellows, blast on blast, 

The sooty smithy jars, 10 

And fire-sparks, rising far and fast, 

Are fading with the stars. 
All day for us the smith shall stand 

Beside that flashing forge; 
All day for us his heavy hand 

The groaning anvil scourge. 

From far-off hills, the panting team 

For us is toiling near; 
For us the raftsmen down the stream 

Their island barges steer. 20 

Rings out for us the axe-man's stroke 

In forests old and still; 
For us the century-circled oak 

Falls crashing down his hill. 



THE SHIP-BUILDERS 



443 




' Look 1 how slie moves adowii the grooves, 
In graceful beauty now " 



Up ! up ! in nobler toil than ours 

No craftsmen bear a part: 
We make of Nature's giant powers 

The slaves of human Art. 
Lay rib to rib and beam to beam, 

And drive the treenails free; 30 

Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam 

Shall tempt the searching sea ! 

Where'er the keel of our good sliip 

The sea's rough field shall plough; 
Where'er her tossing spars shall drip 

With salt-spray caught below; 
That ship must heed her master's 
beck, 
Her helm obey his hand, 
And seamen tread her reeling deck 
As if they trod the land. 40 

Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak 

Of Northern ice may peel; 
The sunken rock and coral peak 

May grate along her keel; 
And know we well the painted shell 

We give to wind and wave. 
Must float, the sailor's citadel. 

Or sink, the sailor's grave ! 



Ho! strike away the l)ars and blocks, 

And set the good ship free ! 50 

Why lingers on tiiese dusty rocks 

The young bride of the sea ? 
Look ! how she moves adown the 
grooves, 

In graceful beauty now! 
How lowly on the breast she loves 

Sinks down her virgin prow! 

God bless her ! wheresoe'er the breeze 

Her snowy wing sliall fan, 
Aside the frozen Hebrides, 

Or sultry Hindi )stan ! fto 

Where'er, in mart or on the main, 

With peaceful Hag unfurled, 
She helps to wind the silken chain 

Of commerce round the world ! 

Speed on the ship! But let her bear 

No merchandise of sin. 
No groaning cargo of despair 

Her roomy hold within; 
No Lethean drug for Eastern lands. 

Nor poison-draught for ours; 70 

But honest fruits of toiling hands 

And iSfature's sun and showers. 



444 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Be hers the Prairie's golden grain, 

Tlie Desert's golden sand, 
The clustered fruits of sunny Spain, 

The spice of Morning-land ! 
Her pathway on the open main 

May blessings follow free. 
And glad hearts welcome back again 

Her white sails from the sea ! so 



THE DROVERS 

Through heat and cold, and shower 
and sun. 

Still onward cheerly driving ! 
There's life alone in duty done, 

And rest alone in striving. 
But see ! the day is closing cool, 

The woods are dim before us; 
The white fog of the wayside pool 

Is creeping slowly o'er us. 

The night is falling, comrades mine, 

Our footsore beasts are weary, lo 
And through yon elms the tavern sign 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
The landlord beckons from his door, 

His beechen fire is glowing; 
These ample barns, with feed in store, 

Are filled to overflowing. 

From many a valley frowned across 

By brows of rugged mountains; 
From hillsides where, through spongy 
Ross, 

Gush out the river fountains; 20 
From quiet farm-fields, green and low, 

And bright with blooming clover; 
From vales of corn the wandering 
crow 

No richer hovers over, — 

Day after day our way has been 

O'er many a hill and hollow; 
By lake and stream, by wood and glen. 

Our stately drove we follow. 
Through dust-clouds rising thick and 
dun. 

As smoke of battle o'er us, 30 

Their white horns glisten in the sun. 

Like plumes and crests before us 

AVe see them slowly climb the hill, 
As slow behind it sinking; 

Or, thronging close, from roadside rill. 
Or sunny lakelet, drinking. 



Now crowding in the narrow road, 
In thick and struggling masses, 

They glare upon the teamster's load, 
Or rattling coach that passes. 40 

Anon, with toss of horn and tail, 

And paw of hoof, and bellow. 
They leap some farmer's broken 
pale, 

O'er meadow-close or fallow. 
Forth comes the startled goodman; 
forth 

Wife, children, house-dog sally, 
Till once more on their dusty path 

The baffled truants rally. 

We drive no starvelings, scraggy 
grown, 49 

Loose-legged, and ribbed and bony. 
Like those who grind their noses 
down 

On pastures bare and stony, — 
Lank oxen, rough as Indian dogs, 

And cows too lean for shadows, 
Disputing feebly with the frogs 

The crop of saw-grass meadows ! 

In our good drove, so sleek and fair, 

No bones of leanness rattle; 
No tottering hide-bound ghosts are 
there. 

Or Pharoah's evil cattle. 60 

Each stately beeve bespeaks the hand 

That fed him unrepining; 
The fatness of a goodly land 

In each dun hide is shining. 

We've sought them where, in warmest 
nooks, 

The freshest feed is growing, 
By sweetest springs and clearest brooks 

Through honeysuckle flowing, 
Wherever hillsides, sloping south. 

Are bright with early grasses, 70 
Or tracking green the lowland's 
drouth, 

The mountain streamlet passes. 

But now the day is closing cool, 

The woods are dim before us, 
The white fog of the wayside pool 

Is creeping slowly o'er us. 
The cricket to the frog's bassoon 

His shrillest time is keeping; 
The sickle of yon setting moon 

The meadow-mist is reaping. 80 



THE HUSKERS 



445 



The night is faUing, comrades mine, 

Our footsore beasts are weary, 
And through yon ehiis the tavern sign 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
To-morrow, eastward with our charge 

We'll go to meet the dawning, 
Ere yet the pines of Kearsage 

Have seen the sun of morning. 

When snow-flakes o'er the frozen 
earth, 
Instead of birds, are flitting; 90 

When children throng the glowing 
hearth. 
And quiet wives are knitting; 
While in the fire-light strong and 
clear 
Young eyes of pleasure glisten. 
To tales of all we see and hear 
The ears of home shall listen. 

By many a Northern lake and hill. 

From many a mountain pasture. 
Shall Fancy play the Drover still, 

And speed the long night faster. 100 
Then let us on, through shower and 
sun. 

And heat and cold, be driving; 
There's life alone in duty done. 

And rest alone in striving. 



THE HUSKERS 

It was late in mild October, and the 
long autumnal rain 

Had left the summer harvest-fields all 
green with grass again; 

The first sharp frosts had fallen, leav- 
ing all the woodlands gay 

With the hues of summer's rainbow, 
or the meadow-flowers of May. 

Through a thin, dry mist, that morn- 
ing, the sun rose broad and red, 

At first a rayless disk of fire, he l)right- 
ened as he sped; 

Yet even his noontide glory fell chas- 
tened and subdued, 

On the cornfields and tlie orchards and 
softly pictured wood. 

And all that quiet afternoon, slow 

sloping to the night, 
He wove with golden shuttle the haze 

with yellow light; 10 



Slanting through the pamted beeches, 

he glorified tiie hill; 
And, beneath it, pond and meadow 

lay brighter, greener still. 

And shouting boys in woodland haunts 

caugiit glimpses of tiiat sky. 
Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, 

andlaughed, they knew not why ; 
And school-girls, gay with a.stcr-flow- 

ers, beside the meadow brooks, 
Mingled tlie glow of autunm with the 

sunshine of sweet looks. 

From spire and barn looked westerly 

the patient weathercocks; 
But even the birciies on the hill stood 

motionless as rocks. 
No sound w^as in the woodlands, save 

the squirrel's dropping shell, 
And the yellow leaves among the 

boughs, low rustling as tlicy fell 

The summer grains were harvested; 
the stubble-fields lay dry, ai 

Where June winds rolled, in light and 
shade, the pale green waves of 
rye; 

But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in val- 
leys fringed with wood, 

Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the 
heavy corn crop stood. 

Bent low% by autumn's wind and rain, 

through husks that, dry and 

sere. 
Unfolded from their ripened charge, 

shone out the yellow ear; 
Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in 

many a verdant fold, 
And glistened in the slanting light the 

pumpkin's sphere of gold. 

There wrought the busy harvesters; 

and many a creaking wain 
Bore slowly to the long l)arn-floor it^ 

load of liusk and grain; ^o 

Till broad and red, as when he rose, 

the sun sank down, at last. 
And like a merry guest's farewell, the 

day in brightness passed. 

And lo ! as througli tlie western pines, 
on meadow, stream, and pond. 

Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set 
all afire bevond, 



446 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a 

milder glory shone, 
And the sunset and the moonrise were 

mingled into one ! 

As thus into the quiet night the twi- 
light lapsed away, 

And deeper in the brightening moon 
the tranquil shadows lay; 

From many a brown old farm-house, 
and hamlet without name, 

Their milking and their home-tasks 
done, the merry huskers came. 

Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, 

from pitchforks in the mow, 41 
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the 

pleasant scene below; 
The growing pile of husks behind, the 

golden ears before. 
And laughing eyes and busy hands 

and brown cheeks glimmering 

o'er. 

Half hidden in a quiet nook, serene of 

look and heart. 
Talking their old times over, the old 

men sat apart; 
While up and down the unhusked pile, 

or nestling in its shade, 
Athide-and-seek, with laugh andshout, 

the happy children played. 

Urged by the good host's daughter, a 

maiden young and fair. 
Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and 

pride of soft l^rown hair, so 
The master of the village school, sleek 

of hair and smooth of tongue, 
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, 

a husking-ballad sung. 

THE CORN-SONG 

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard ! 

Heap high the golden corn ! 
No richer gift has Autumn poured 

From out her lavish horn ! 

Let other lands, exulting, glean 

Tlie apple from the pine, 
The orange from its glossy green, 

Tlie cluster from the vine; 60 

We l)etter love the hardy gift 
Our rugged vales bestow, 



To cheer us when the storm shall 
drift 
Out harvest-fields with snow. 

Through vales of grass and meads of 
flowers 

Our ploughs their furrows made. 
While on the hills the sun and showers 

Of changeful April played. 

We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain 
Beneath the sun of May, 70 

And frightened from our sprouting 
grain 
The robber crows away. 

All through the long, bright days of 
June 

Its leaves grew green and fair. 
And waved in hot midsummer's noon 

Its soft and yellow hair. 

And now, with autumn's moonlit eves, 
Its harvest-time has come. 

We pluck away the frosted leaves. 
And bear the treasure home. 80 

There, when the snows about us drift, 
And winter winds are cold. 

Fair hands the broken grain shall sift, 
And knead its meal of gold. 

Let vapid idlers loll in silk 
Around their costly board; 

Give us the bowl of samp and milk, 
By homespun beauty poured ! 

Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth 
Sends up its smoky curls, 90 

Who will not thank the kindly earth, 
And bless our farmer girls ! 

Then shame on all the proud and vain, 
Whose folly laughs to scorn 

The blessing of our hardy grain, 
Our wealth of golden corn I 

Let earth withhold her goodly root, 
Let mildew blight the rye. 

Give to the worm the orchard's fruit. 
The wheat-field to the fly: 100 

But let the good old crop adorn 
The hills our fathers trod; 

Still let us, for his golden corn, 
Send up our thanks to God ! 



THE REFORMER 



447 



THE REFORMER 

All grim and soiled and brown with 
tan, 
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath, 
Smiting the godless shrines of man 
Along his path. 

The Church, beneath her trembling 
dome, 
Essayed in vain her ghostly charm : 
Wealth shook within his gilded home 
With strange alarm. 

Fraud from his secret chambers fled 

Before the sunlight bursting in: lo 
Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head 
To drown the din. 

"Spare," Art implored, "yon holy 
pile; 
That grand, old, time-worn turret 
spare;" 
Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle. 
Cried out, "Forbear!" 

Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and 

blind, 

Groped for his old accustomed 

stone 

Leaned on his staff, and wept to find 

His seat o'erthrown. 20 

Young Romance raised his dreamy 
eyes, 
O'erhung with paly locks of gold, — 
"Why smite," he asked in sad sur- 
prise, 

"The fair, the old?" 

Yet louder rang the Strong One's 
stroke. 
Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam; 
Shuddering and sick of heart I woke. 
As from a dream. 

I looked: aside the dust-cloud rolled, 
The Waster seemed the Builder 
too; 
Upspringing from the ruined Old 31 
I saw the New. 

'T was but the ruin of the bad, — 

The wasting of the wrong and ill; 
Whate'er of good the old time had 
Was living still. 



Calm grew the brows of him 1 feared; 

The frown which awed me passed 

away. 

And left l)ehind a smile which cheered 

Like breaking day. 40 

The grain grew green on battle-phiins, 
O'er swarded war-mounds grazed 
the cow; 
The slave stood forging from liis chains 
The spade and plough. 

Where frowned the fort, paviHons 

gay 

And cottage windows, flower-en- 
twined. 
Looked out upon the peaceful bay 
And hills l)elund. 

Through vine-wreathed cups witii 

wine once red, 

The lights on brimming cr\'stal fell, 

Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet 

head 51 

And mossy well. 

Through prison walls, like Heaven- 
sent liope. 
Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams 
strayed, 
And with the idle gallows-rope 

The young child played. 

Where the doomed city victim in his 
cell 
Had counted o'er the weary hours, 
Glad school-girls, answering to the 
bell. 

Came crowned with flowers. 

Grown wiser for the lesson given, 61 

I fear no longer, for I know 
That, where the share is deepest driven 
The best fruit« grow. 

The outworn rite, the old abuse, 

The pious fraud transparent gro\s-n, 
The good held captive in the use 
Of wrong alone, — 

These wait their doom, from that 
great law 
Which makes the past time serve 
to-dav; '° 

And fresher life the world shall draw 
From their decay. 



448 



SONGS 01^ LABOR AND REFORM 



Oh, backward-looking son of time! 

The new is old, the old is new, 
The cycle of a change sublime 
Still sweeping through. 

So wisely taught the Indian seer; 

Destroying Seva, forming Brahm, 
Who wake by turns Earth's love and 
fear, 

Are one, the same. 80 

Idly as tiiou, in tliat old day 

Thou mournest, did thy sire repine; 
So, in his time, thy child grown gray 
Shall sigh for thine. 

But life shall on and upward go; 

Th' eternal step of Progress beats 
To that great anthem, calm and 
slow, 

Which God repeats. 

Take heart! the Waster builds 
again, — 89 

A charmed life old Goodness hath; 
The tares may perish, but the grain 
Is not for death. 

God works in all things; all obey 

His first propulsion from the night: 
Wake thou and watch ! the world is 
gray 

With morning light ! 



THE PEACE CONVENTION AT 
BRUSSELS 

Still in thy streets, O Paris ! doth the 

stain 
Of blood defy the cleansing autumn 

rain ; 
Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins 

through. 
And Naples mourns that new Barthol- 
omew, 
When squalid beggary, for a dole of 

bread. 
At a crowned murderer's beck of 

license, fed 
The yawning trenches with her noble 

dead ; 
Still, doomed Vienna, through thy 

stately halls 
The shell goes crashing and the red 

shot falls, 



And, leagued to crush thee, on the 
J3anube's side, 10 

The bearded Croat and Bosniak spear- 
man ride; 

Still in that vale where Himalaya's snow 

Melts round the cornfields and the 
vines below, 

The Sikh's hot cannon, answering ball 
for ball. 

Flames in the breach of Moultan's 
shattered wall; 

On Chenab's side the vulture seeks the 
slain. 

And Sutlej paints with blood its banks 
again. 

" What folly, then," the faithless critic 
cries, 

With sneering lip, and wise world- 
knowing eyes, 

" While fort to fort, and post to post, 
repeat 20 

The ceaseless challenge of the war- 
drum's beat. 

And round the green earth, to the 
church-bell's chime. 

The morning drum-roll of the camp 
keeps time, 

To dream of peace amidst a world in 
arms. 

Of swords to ploughshares changed by 
Scriptural charms. 

Of nations, drunken with the wine of 
blood. 

Staggering to take the Pledge of Bro- 
therhood, 

Like tipplers answering Father Ma- 
thew's call; 

The sullen Spaniard, and the mad-cap 
Gaul, 

The bull-dog Briton, yielding but with 
life, 30 

The Yankee swaggering with his 
bowie-knife. 

The Russ, from banquets with the 
vulture shared. 

The blood still dripping from his am- 
ber beard. 

Quitting their mad Berserker dance to 
hear 

The dull, meek droning of a drab-coat 
seer; 

Leaving the sport of Presidents and 
Kings, 

Where men for dice each titled gam- 
bler flings, 



THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS 



449 



To meet alternate on the Seine and 
Thames, 

For tea and gossip, like old coimtry 
dames ! 

No ! let the cravens plead the weak- 
ling's cant, 40 

Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent 
rant, 



Rosy and sleek, the sable-gowned di- 
vine. 

O'er his third bottle of suggestive 
wine. 

To plumed and sworded auditors, shall 
prove 

Their trade accordant with the Law of 
Love; 




Brussels 



Let Sturge preach peace to democratic 
throngs, 

And Burritt, stammering through his 
hundred tongues, 

Repeat, in all, his ghostly lessons o'er, 

Timed to the pauses of the battery's 
roar; 

Check Ban or Kaiser with the barricade 

Of 'Olive-leaves' and Resolutions 
■ made, 

Spike guns with pointed Scripture- 
texts, and hope 

To capsize navies with a windy trope; 

Still shall the glory and the pom.p of 
War so 

Along their train the shouting millions 
draw; 

Still dusty Labor to the passing Brave 

His cap shall doff, and Beauty's ker- 
chief wave; 

Still shall the bard to Valor time his 
song. 

Still Hero-worship kneel before the 
Strong; 



And Ciiurch for State, and State for 

Church, shall fight, 60 

And both agree, that Migiit alone is 

Right!" 
Despite of sneers like these, O faithful 

few, 
Who dare to hold God's word and 

witness true. 
Whose clear-eyed faith transcends our 

evil time, 
And o'er the present wilderness of 

crime 
Sees the calm future, with its robes of 

green , 
Its fleece-flecked mountains, and soft 

streams between, — 
Still keep the path which duty bids ye 

tread 
Though worldly wisdom shake the 

cautious head; 
No truth from Heaven descends upon 

our sphere, 70 

Without the greeting of the skeptic's 

sneer; 



45° 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Denied and mocked at, till its blessings 

fall, 
Common as dew and sunshine, over 

all. 

Then, o'er Earth's war-field, till the 

strife shall cease. 
Like Morven's harpers, sing your song 

of peace; 
As in old fable rang the Thracian's 

lyre, 
Midst howl of fiends and roar of penal 

fire, 
Till the fierce din to pleasing murmurs 

fell, 
And love subdued the maddened heart 

of hell. 
Lend, once again, that holy song a 

tongue, 80 

Which the glad angels of the Advent 

sung. 
Their cradle-anthem for the Saviour's 

birth. 
Glory to God, and peace unto the 

earth ! 
Through tlie mad discord send that 

calming word 
Which wind and wave on wild Genne- 

sareth heard, 
Lift in Christ's name his Cross against 

the Sword ! 
Not vain the vision which the prophets 

saw, 
Skirting with green the fiery waste of 

war, 
Through the hot sand-gleam, looming 

soft and calm 
On the sky's rim, the fountain-shading 

palm. go 

Still lives for Earth, which fiends so 

long have trod. 
The great hope resting on the truth 

of God, — 
Evil shall cease and Violence pass 

away. 
And the tired world breathe free 

through a long Sabbath day. 
nth mo., 1848. 



THE PRISONER FOR DEBT 

Look on himl through his dungeon 
grate. 
Feebly and cold, the morning light 



Comes stealing round him, dim and 
late. 
As if it loathed the sight. 
Reclining on his strawy bed. 
His hand upholds liis drooping head; 
His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard. 
Unshorn his gray, neglected beard; 
And o'er his bony fingers flow 
His long, dishevelled locks of snow. 10 

No grateful fire before him glows. 

And yet the winter's breath is chill; 
And o'er his half-clad person goes 

The frequent ague thrill ! 
Silent, save ever and anon, 
A sound, half murmur and half groan, 
Forces apart the painful grip 
Of the old sufferer's bearded lip; 
Oh, sad and crushing is the fate 
Of old age chained and desolate ! 20 

Just God! why lies that old man 

there ? 
A murderer shares his prison bed. 
Whose eyeballs, through his horrid 

hair, 
Gleam on him, fierce and red; 
And the rude oath and heartless jeer 
Fall ever on his loathing ear. 
And, or in wakefulness or sleep. 
Nerve, flesh, and pulses thrill and 

creep 
Whene'er that ruffian's tossing limb. 
Crimson with murder, touches him ! 30 

What has the gray-haired prisoner 

done? 
Has murder stained his hands with 

gore? 
Not so; his crime's a fouler one; 

God made the old man poor ! 
For this he shares a felon's cell, 
The fittest earthly type of hell ! 
For this, the boon for which he poured 
His young blood on the invader's 

sword. 
And counted light the fearful cost. 
His blood-gained liberty is lost ! 40 

And so, for such a place of rest. 

Old prisoner, dropped thy blood as 
rain 

On Concord's field, and Bunker's crest, 
And Saratoga's plain ? 

Look fortli, thou man of many scars. 

Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars; 



THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS 



451 



It must be joy. in sooth, to see 
Yon monument upreared to thee; 
Piled granite and a prison cell, — 
The land repays thy service well ! so 

Go, ring the bells and fire the guns, 
And fling the starry banner out; 
Shout "Freedom!" till your lisping 
ones 
Give back their cradle-shout; 
Let boastful eloquence declaim 
Of honor, liberty, and fame; 
StiU let the poet's strain be heard, 
With glory for each second word. 
And everything with breath agree 
To praise " our glorious liberty ! " 60 

But when the patron cannon jars 

That prison's cold and gloomy wall. 
And through its grates the stripes and 
stars 
Rise on the wind, and fall, 
Think ye that prisoner's aged ear 
Rejoices in the general cheer? 
Think ye his dim and failing eye 
Is kindled at your pageantry ? 
Sorrowing of soul, and chained of limb. 
What is your carnival to him ? 70 

Down with the law that binds him thus ! 

Unworthy freemen, let it find 
No refuge from the withering curse 

Of god and human-kind ! 
Open the prison's living tomb. 
And usher from its brooding gloom 
The victims of your savage code 
To the free sun and air of God; 
No longer dare as crime to brand 
The chastening of the Almighty's 
hand. 80 



THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS 

No aimless wanderers, by the fiend 
Unrest 
Goaded from shore to shore; 
No schoolmen, turning, in their classic 
quest, 
The leaves of empire o'er. 
Simple of faith, and bearing in their 
hearts 
The love of man and God, 
Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient 
marts, 
And Scythia's steppes, they trod. 



Where the long shadows of the fir and 
pine 
In the night sun are cast, 10 

And the deep heart of many a Norland 
mine 
Quakes at each riving blast; 
Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa 
stands, 
A baptized Scythian queen, 
With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled 
hands 
The North and East between ! 

Where still, through vales of Grecian 
fable stray 
The classic forms of yore, 
And beauty smiles, new risen from the 
spray, 
And Dian weeps once more; jo 
Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart 
resounds; 
And Stamboul from the sea 
Lifts her tall minarets over burial- 
grounds 
Black with the cypress-tree! 

From Malta's temples to the gates of 
Rome, 
Following the track of Paul, 
And where the Alps gird round the 
Switzer's home 
Their vast, eternal wall; 
They paused not l>y the ruins of old 
time. 
They scanned no pictures rare, .\o 
Nor lingered where the snow-locked 
mountains climb 
The cold abyss of air ! 

But unto prisons, where men lay in 
chains, 
To haunts where Hunger pined. 
To kings and courts forgetful of the 
pains 
And wants of lunnan-kind, 
Scattering sweet words, and quiet 
deeds of good. 
Along their way, like flowers. 
Or pleading, as Christ's freemen only 
could, 
With princes and with powers; 40 

Their single aim tlio purpose to fulfil 
Of Tnitli. from day to day. 

Simply obedient to its guiding will. 
They held their pilgrim way. 



452 



SONGS OF LABOR' AND REFORM 



Yet dream not, hence, the beautiful 
and old 
Were wasted on their sight, 
Who in the school of Christ had learned 
to hold 
All outward things aright. 

Not less to them the Ijreath of vine- 
yards blown 
From off the Cyprian shore, so 
Not less for them the Alps in sunset 
shone, 
That man they valued more. 
A life of beauty lends to all it sees 

The beauty of its thought; 
And fairest forms and sweetest har- 
monies 
Make glad its way, unsought. 

In sweet accordancy of praise and love, 

The singing w^aters run; 
And sunset mountains wear in light 
above 
The smile of duty done; 60 

Sure stands the promise, — ever to 
the meek 
A heritage is given; 
Nor lose they Earth who, single- 
hearted, seek 
The righteousness of Heaven ! 



THE MEN OF OLD 

Well speed thy mission, bold Icono- 
clast ! 
Yet all unworthy of its trust thou 

art. 
If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving 
heart, 
Thou tread 'st the solemn Pantheon of 
the Past, 
By the great Future's dazzling hope 

made blind 
To all the beauty, power, and truth 
behind. 
Not witliout reverent awe shouldst 
thou put by 
The cypress branches and the ama- 
ranth blooms, 
Where, with clasped hands of 
prayer, upon their tombs 
The effigies of old confessors lie, 10 
God's witnesses; the voices of His will. 
Heard in the slow march of the cen- 
turies still ! 



Such were the men at whose rebuking 

frown, 
Dark with God's wrath, the tyrant's 

knee went down; 
Such from the terrors of the guilty 

drew 
The vassal's freedom and the poor 

man's due. 
St. Anselm (may he rest forevermore 
In Heaven's sweet peace !) forbade, 

of old, the sale 
Of men as slaves, and from the sa- 
cred pale 
Hurled the Northumbrian buyers of 

the poor. 20 

To ransom souls from bonds and evil 

fate 
St. Ambrose melted down the sacred 

plate, — 
Image of saint, the chalice, and the 

pix. 
Crosses of gold, and silver candlesticks. 
"Man is worth more than temples!" 

he replied 
To such as came his holy work to chide. 
And brave Cesarius, stripping altars 

bare. 
And coining from the Abbey's 

golden hoard 
The captive's freedom, answered to 

the prayer 
Or threat of those whose fierce zeal 

for the Lord 30 

Stifled their love of man, — " An 

earthen dish 
The last sad supper of the Master 

bore; 
Most miserable sinners ! do ye wish 
More than your Lord, and grudge 

His dying poor 
What your own pride and not His 

need requires ? 
Souls, than these shining gauds, He 

values more: 
Mercy, not sacrifice. His heart de- 
sires!" 
O faithful worthies ! resting far behind 
In your dark ages, since ye fell asleep. 
Much has been done for truth and hu- 
mankind; 40 
Shadows are scattered wherein ye 

groped blind; 
Man claims his birthright, freer pulses 

leap 
Through peoples driven in your day 

like sheep; 



TO PIUS IX 



453 



Yet, like your own, our age's sphere of 

light. 
Though widening still, is walled around 

by night; 
With slow, reluctant eye, the Church 

has read, 
Skeptic at heart, the lessons of its 

Head; 
Counting, too oft, its living members 

less 
Than the wall's garnish and the pul- 
pit's dress; 
World-moving zeal, with power to 

bless and feed 50 

Life's fainting pilgrims, to their utter 

need. 
Instead of bread, holds out the stone 

of creed; 
Sect builds and worships where its 

wealth and pride 
And vanity stand shrined and deified, 
Careless that in the shadow of its walls 
God's living temple into ruin falls. 
We need, methinks, the prophet-hero 

still, 
Saints true of life, and martyrs strong 

of will. 
To tread the land, even now, as Xavier 

trod 
The streets of Goa, barefoot, with 

his bell, 60 

Proclaiming freedom in the name of 

God, 
And startling tyrants with the fear 

of hell ! 
Soft words, smooth prophecies, are 

doubtless well; 
But to rebuke the age's popular crime, 
We need the souls of fire, the hearts of 

that old time ! 



TO PIUS IX 

The cannon's brazen lips are cold; 

No red shell Ijlazes down the air; 
And street and tower, and temple 
old. 

Are silent as despair. 

The Lombard stands no more at 
bay, 
Rome's fresh young life has bled m 
vain; 
The ravens scattered by the day 
Come back with night again. 



Now, while the fratricides of France 
Are treading on the neck of Rome, 10 

Hider at Gaeta, seize thy chance ! 
Coward and cruel, come ! 

Creep now from Naples' bloody skirt; 

Thy mummer's part was acted well. 
While Rome, with steel and fire begirt, 

Before thy crusade fell ! 

Her death-groans answered to thy 
prayer; 

Thy chant, the drum and bugle-call; 
Thy lights, the burning villa's glare; 

Thy beads, the shell and ball ! 20 

Let Austria clear thy way, with hands 
Foul from Ancona's cruel sack, 

And Naples, with his dastard bands 
Of murderers, lead thee back ! 

'Rome's lips are dumb; tlie orphan's 
wail, 
The mother's shriek, thou mayst 
not hear 
Above the faithless Frenchman's hail, 
The unsexed shaveling's ciieer! 

Go, bind on Rome her cast-off weight, 

The double curse of crook and 

crown, 30 

Though woman's scorn and manhood's 

hate 

From wall and roof flash dovm ! 

Nor heed those blood-stains on the wall, 
Not Tiber's flood can wa.sh away, 

Where, in thy stately Quirinal, 
Thy mangled victims lay ! 

Let the world murmur; let its cry 
Of horror and disgu.st he lieard; 

Truth stands alone; thy coward lie 
Is backed by lance and sword ! 40 

The cannon of St. Angelo, 

And chanting priest and clanging 
bell, 
And beat of drum and bugle blow, 

Shall greet thy coming well ! 

Let lips of iron and tongues of slaves 
Fit welcome give thtH>; for her part, 

Rome, frowning o'er her new-made 
graves. 
Shall curse thee from her heart I 



454 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



No wreatlis of sad Caiiipagna's flowers 
Shall childhood m thy pathway 
fling; 50 

No garlands from their ravaged bow- 
ers 
Shall Terni's maidens bring; 

But, hateful as that tyrant old, 
Tlie mocking witness of his crime, 

In thee shall loathing eyes behold 
The Nero of our time ! 

Stand where Rome's blood was freest 
shed. 
Mock Heaven with impious thanks 
and call 
Its curses on the patriot dead, 

Its blessings on the Gaul ! 60 

Or sit upon thy throne of lies, 

A poor, mean idol, blood-l^esmeared. 

Whom even its worshippers despise, 
Unhonored, unrevered ! 

Yet, Scandal of the World ! from thee 
One needful truth mankind shall 
learn : 

That kings and priests to Liberty 
And God are false in turn. 

Earth wearies of them ; and the long 
Meek sufferance of the Heavens 
doth fail: 70 

Woe for weak tyrants, when the strong 
Wake, struggle, and prevail ! 

Not vainly Roman hearts have bled 
To feed the Crosier and the Crown, 

If, roused thereby, the world shall 
tread 
The twin-born vampires down ! 



CALEF IN BOSTON 
1692 

In the solemn days of old, 

Two men met in Boston town, 

One a tradesman frank and bold, 
One a preacher of renown. 

Cried the last, in bitter tone: 
" Poisoner of the wells of truth ! 

Satan's hireling, thou hast sown 
With his tares the heart of youth ! 



Spake the simple tradesman then, 
"God be judge 'twixt thee and 
me; 

All thou knowest of truth hath been 
Once a lie to men like thee. 

" Falsehoods which we spurn to-day 
Were the truths of long ago; 

Let the dead boughs fall away. 
Fresher shall the living grow. 

" God is good and God is light, 

In this faith I rest secure; 
Evil can but serve the right. 

Over all shall love endure. 

" Of your spectral puppet play 
I have traced the cunning wires; 

Come what will, I needs must say, 
God is true, and ye are liars." 

When the thought of man is free, 
Error fears its lightest tones; 

So the priest cried, "Sadducee!" 
And the people took up stones. 

In the ancient burying-ground, 
Side by side the twain now lie; 

One with humble grassy mound. 
One with marbles pale and high. 

But the Lord hath blest the seed 
Which that tradesman scattered 
then. 

And the preacher's spectral creed 
Chills no more the blood of men. 

Let us trust, to one is known 

Perfect love which casts out fear, 

While the other's joys atone 
For the wrong he suffered here. 



OUR STATE 



The 



South-land boasts its teeming 
cane. 
The prairied West its heavy grain, 
And sunset's radiant gates unfold 
On rising marts and sands of gold ! 

Rough, bleak, and hard, our little 

State 
Is scant of soil, of limits strait; 
Her yellow sands are sands alone. 
Her only mines are ice and stone ! 



THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES 



455 




" Nor heeds the skeptic's puny liands, 
Wliile near her school tlie church-spire stands' 



From Autumn frost to April rain, 
Too long her winter woods complain; 
From budding flower to falling leaf, 
Her summer time is all too brief. 

Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands. 
And wintry hills, tlie school-house 

stands, 
And what her rugged soil denies, 
The harvest of the mind supplies. 

The riches of the Commonwealth 
Are free, strong minds, and hearts of 

health; 
And more to her than gold or grain. 
The cunning hand and cultured brain. 

For well she keeps her ancient stock. 
The stubborn strength of Pilgri m R ock ; 
And still maintains, with milder laws, 
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause ! 



Nor heeds the sUeptic'.s puny hands. 
While near her school the church- 
spire stands; 
Xor fears the blinded bigot's rule, 
While near her church-spire stands the 
school. 



THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES 

I HAVE l)een thinking of the victims 

bound 
In Naples, dying for the lack of 

air 
And sunshine, in their close, damp 

cells of pain. 
Where hope is not, and innocence in 

vain 
Appeals against tin- torture and the 

chain ! 



45 6 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Unfortunates ! whose crime it was to 
share 

Our common love of freedom, and to 
dare, 

In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple- 
crowned. 

And her base pander, the most hate- 
ful thing 

Who upon Christian or on Pagan 
ground ^° 

Makes vile the old heroic name of king. 

O God most merciful ! Father just and 
kind ! 

Whom man hath bound let thy right 
hand unbind. 

Or, if thy purposes of good behind 

Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers 
find 

Strong consolations; leave them not 
to doubt 

Thy providential care, nor yet with- 
out 

The hope which all thy attributes in- 
spire. 

That not in vain the martyr's robe of 
fire 

Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting 
chain; 20 

Since all who suffer for thy truth send 
forth, 

Electrical, with every throb of pain. 

Unquenchable sparks, thy own bap- 
tismal rain 

Of fire and spirit over all the earth. 

Making the dead in slavery live again. 

Let this great hope be with them, as 
they lie 

Shut from the light, the greenness, and 
the sky; 

From the cool waters and the pleasant 
breeze. 

The smell of flowers, and shade of 
summer trees; 

Bound with the felon lepers, whom 
disease 30 

And sins abhorred make loathsome; 
let them share 

Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to 
bear 

Years of unutterable torment, stern 
and still, 

As the chained Titan victor through 
liis will ! 

Comfort them with thy future; let 
them see 

The day-dawn of Italian liberty; 



For that, with all good things, is hid 

with Thee, 
And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its 

time to be ! 

I who have spoken for freedom at the 

cost 
Of some weak friendships, or some 

paltry prize 40 

Of name or place, and more than I 

have lost 
Have gained in wider reach of sym- 
pathies. 
And free communion with the good 

and wise; 
May God forbid that I should ever 

boast 
Such easy self-denial, or repine 
That the strong pulse of health no 

more is mine; 
That, overworn at noonday, I must 

yield 
To other hands the gleaning of the 

field; 
A tired on-looker through the day's 

decline. 
For blest beyond deserving still, and 

knowing 50 

That kindly Providence its care is 

showing 
In the withdrawal as in the bestowing, 
Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray. 
Beautiful yet for me this autumn day 
Melts on its sunset hills ; and, far 

away. 
For me the Ocean lifts its solemn 

psalm, 
To me the pine- woods whisper; and 

for me 
Yon river, winding through its vales 

of calm. 
By greenest banks, with asters purple- 
starred, 
And gentian bloom and golden-rod 

made gay, 60 

Flows down in silent gladness to the 

sea. 
Like a pure spirit to its great reward ! 

Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near 
and dear. 

Whose love is round me like this at- 
mosphere. 

Warm, soft, and golden. For such 
gifts to me 

What shall I render, O my God, to thee? 



ASTR^A 



457 



Let me not dwell upon my lighter share 
Of pain and ill that human Ufe must 

bear; 
Save me from selfish pining; let my 

heart, 
Drawn from itself in sympathy, for- 
. get 70 

The bitter longings of a vain regret, 
The anguish of its own peculiar smart. 
Remembering others, as I have to-day, 
In their great sorrows, let me live 

alway 
Not for myself alone, but have a part, 
Such as a frail and erring spirit may. 
In love which is of Thee, and which 

indeed Thou art ! 



THE PEACE OF EUROPE 
1852 

"Great peace in Europe! Order 

reigns 
From Tiber's hills to Danube's 

plains ! " 
So say her kings and priests; so say 
The lying prophets of our day. 

Go lay to earth a listening ear; 
The tramp of measured marches hear; 
The rolling of the cannon's wheel. 
The shotted musket's murderous peal, 
The night alarm, the sentry's call. 
The quick-eared spy in hut and hall ! 
From Polar sea and tropic fen 1 1 

The dying-groans of exiled men! 
The bolted cell, the galley's chains. 
The scaffold smoking with its stains ! 
Order, the hush of brooding slaves ! 
Peace, in the dungeon-vaults and 
graves ! 

Fisher! of the world-wide net, 
With meshes in all waters set, 
Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell 
Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell, 20 
And open wide the banquet-hall. 
Where kings and priests hold carnival ! 
Weak vassal tricked in royal guise. 
Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies; 
Base gambler for Napoleon's crown, 
Barnacle on his dead renown ! 
Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan, 
Crowned scandal, loathed of God and 



man: 



And thou, fell Spider of the North ! 
Stretching thy giant feelers forth, 30 
Within whose web the freedom dies 
Of nations eaten up like flies ! 
Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and 

Czar! 
If this be Peace, pray what is War? 

White Angel of the Lord ! unmeet 
That soil accursed for thy pure feet. 
Never in Slavery's desert flows 
The fountain of thy charmed repose; 
No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves 
Of lilies and of olive-leaves; 40 

Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell, 
Thus saith the Eternal Oracle; 
Thy home is with the pure and free ! 
Stern herald of thy bettor day. 
Before thee, to prepare thy way, 
The Baptist Shade of Liberty, 
Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, nmst 

press 
With bleeding feet the wilderness ! 
Oh that its voice might pierce the ear 
Of princes, trembling while they hear 
A cry as of the Hebrew seer: $> 

Repent! God's kingdom draweth 

near! 



ASTR^A 

"Jove means to settle 
Astraea in her seat again. 
And let down from his golden cliain 

An age of better metal." 

Ben Jonson, 1615. 

O POET rare and old ! 

Thy words are prophecies; 
Forward the age of gold. 

The new Saturnian lies. 

The universal prayer 

And hope are not in vain; 

Rise, brothers ! and prepare 
The way for Saturn's reign. 

Perish shall all which takes 
From labor's board and can; 

Perish shall all which makes 
A spaniel of tiie man ! 

Free from its bonds the mind, 
The body from the rod; 

Broken all chains that bind 
The image of our God. 



b 



458 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Just men no longer pine 
Behind their prison-bars; 

Through the rent dungeon shine 
The free sun and the stars. 

Earth own, at last, untrod 
By sect, or caste, or clan, 

The fatherhood of God, 
The brotherhood of nman ! 

Fraud fail, craft perish, forth 
The money-changers driven, 

And God's will done on earth, 
As now in heaven ! 



THE DISENTHRALLED 



He 



had bowed down to drunken- 
ness, 
An abject worshipper; 
The pride of manhood's pulse had 
grown 
Too faint and cold to stir; 
And he had given his spirit up 

To the unblessed thrall. 
And bowing to the poison cup. 
He gloried in his fall ! 

There came a change — the cloud 
rolled off, 

And light fell on his brain — lo 
And like the passing of a dream 

That Cometh not again, 
The shadow of the spirit fled. 

He saw the gulf before, 
He shuddered at the waste behind. 

And was a man once more. 

He shook the serpent folds away. 

That gathered round his heart, 
As shakes the swaying forest-oak 

It poison vine apart; 20 

He stood erect; returning pride 

Grew terrible within. 
And conscience sat in judgment, on 

His most familiar sin. 

The light of Intellect again 

Along his pathway shone; 
And Reason like a monarch sat 

Upon his olden throne. 
The honored and tlie wise once more 

Within his presence came; 30 

And lingered oft on lovely lips 

His once forbidden name. 



There may be glory in the might 

That treadeth nations down; 
Wreaths for the crimson conqueror, 

Pride for the kingly crown; 
But nobler is that triumph hour. 

The disenthralled shall find, 
When evil passion boweth down 

Unto the Godlike mind ! 



THE POOR VOTER ON ELEC- 
TION DAY 

The proudest now is but my peer, 

The highest not more high; 
To-day, of all the weary year, 

A king of men am I. 
To-day alike are great and small, 

The nameless and the known; 
My palace is the people's hall. 

The ballot-box my throne ! 

Who serves to-day upon the list 

Beside the served shall stand; 
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist, 

The gloved and dainty hand ! 
The rich is level with the poor, 

The weak is strong to-day; 
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more 

Than homespun frock of gray. 

To-day let pomp and vain pretence 

My stubborn right abide; 
I set a plain man's common sense 

Against the pedant's pride. 
To-day shall simple manhood try 

The strength of gold and land; 
The wide world has not wealth to buy 

The power in my right hand ! 

While there's a grief to seek redress. 

Or balance to adjust. 
Where weighs our living manhood less 

Than Mammon's vilest dust, — 
While there's a right to need my vote, 

A wrong to sweep away. 
Up ! clouted knee and ragged coat ! 

A man 's a man to-day ! 



THE DREAM OF PIO NONO 

It chanced that while the pious 
troops of France 
Fought in the crusade Pio Nono 
preached, 



THE DREAM OF PIO N0>70 



459 



What time the holy Bourbons stayed 

his hands 
(The Hur and Aaron meet for such a 

Moses) , 
Stretched forth from Naples towards 

rebellious Rome 
To bless the ministry of Oudinot, 
And sanctify his iron homilies 
And sharp persuasions of the bayonet, 
That the great pontiff fell asleep, and 

dreamed. 

He stood by Lake Tiberias, in the 
sun 10 

Of the bright Orient; and beheld tlie 
lame, 

The sick, and blind, kneel at the Mas- 
ter's feet. 

And rise up whole. And, sweetly over 
all, 

Dropping the ladder of their hymn of 
praise 

From heaven to earth, in silver rounds 
of song, 

He heard the blessed angels sing of 
peace. 

Good-will to man, and glory to the 
Lord. 

Then one, with feet unshod, and 

leathern face 
Hardened and darkened by fierce 

summer suns 
And hot winds of the desert, closer 

drew 20 

His fisher's haick, and girded up his 

loins. 
And spake, as one who had authority: 
"Come thou with me." 

Lakeside and eastern sky 
And the sweet song of angels passed 

away. 
And, with a dream's alacrity of change. 
The priest, and the swart fisher by his 

side. 
Beheld the Eternal City lift its domes 
And solemn fanes and monumental 

pomp 
Above the waste Campagna. On the 

hills 
The blaze of burning villas rose and 

fell, 30 

And momently the mortar's iron throat 
Roared from the trenches; and, 

within the walls, 



Sharp crash of shells, low groans of 
human pain, 

Shout, drum beat, and the clanging 
larum-bell. 

And the tramp of hosts, sent up a 
mingled sound. 

Half wail and half defiance. As they 
passed 

The gate of San Pancrazio, human 
blood 

Flowed ankle-higii about tliem, and 
dead men 

Choked the long street with gashed 
and gory piles, — 

A ghastly barricade of mangled flesh, 

From which, at times, quivered a liv- 
ing hand, 41 

And wliite lips moved and moaned. A 
father tore 

His gray hairs, by the body of his son, 

In frenzy; and his fair young daugh- 
ter wept 

On his old bosom. Suddenly a flash 

Clove the thick sulphurous air. aii<l 
man and maitl 

Sank, crushed and mangled by the 
shattering shell. 

Then spake tiie Galilean: "Thou 

hast seen 
The blessed Master and His works of 

love; 
Look now on thine ! Hear'st thou the 

angels sing so 

Above tiiis open hell? Thou God's 

high-priest ! 
Thou the Vicegerent of the Prince of 

Peace ! 
Thou the succes.sor of His chosen ones ! 
I, Peter, fisherman of Galilee, 
In the dear Master's name, and for the 

love 
Of His true Church, proclaim thee An- 
tichrist, 
Alien and separate from His holy faith 
Wide as the difi"erence between death 

and life. 
The hate of man and tiie great love of 

God ! 
Hence, and repent!" 

Thereat the pontiff woke. 

Trembling, and muttermg o'er his 
fearful dream. '»« 

"What means he?" cried the Bour- 
bon. "Nothing more 



460 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Than that your majesty hath all too 

well 
Catered for your poor guests, and that, 

in sooth, 
The Holy Father's supper troubleth 

him," 
Said Cardinal Antonelli, with a smile. 



THE VOICES 

" Why urge the long, unequal fight. 
Since Truth has fallen in the street. 

Or lift anew the trampled light, 
Quenched by the heedless million's 
feet? 

" Give o'er the thankless task; forsake 
The fools who know not ill from 
good: 

Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take 
Thine ease among the multitude. 

"Live out thyself; with others share 
Thy proper life no more; assume 10 

The unconcern of sun and air. 

For hfe or death, or blight or bloom. 

" The mountain pine looks calmly on 
The fires that scourge the plains 
below. 

Nor heeds the eagle in the sun 

The small birds piping in the snow ! 

"The world is God's, not thine; let 
Him 
Work out a change, if change must 
be: 
The hand that planted best can trim 
And nurse the old unfruitful tree. "20 

So spake the Tempter, when the light 

()f sun and stars had left the sky;' 
I listened, through the cloud and 
night, 
And heard, methought, a voice 
reply: 

"That task may well seem over-hard. 
Who scatterest in a thankless soil " 

Thy life as seed, with no reward 
Save that which Duty gives to Toil. 

" Not wholly is tliy heart resigned 
To Heaven's benign and just de- 
cree, 30 



Which, linking thee with all thy kind, 
Transmits their joys and griefs to 
thee. 

" Break off that sacred chain, and turn 
Back on thyself thy love and care; 

Be thou thine own mean idol, burn 
Faith, Hope, and Trust, thy chil- 
dren, there. 

" Released from that fraternal law 
Which shares the common bale and 
bliss, 
No sadder lot could Folly draw, 
Or Sin provoke from Fate, than 
this. 40 

"The meal unshared is food unblest: 
Thou hoard'st in vain what love 
should spend; 

Self -ease is pain; thy only rest 
Is labor for a worthy end; 

" A toil that gains with what it yields, 
And scatters to its own increase. 

And hears, while sowing outward 
fields. 
The harvest-song of inward peace. 

" Free-lipped the liberal streamlets 
run. 

Free shines for all the healthful ray; 
The still pool stagnates in the sun, 51 

The lurid earth-fire haunts decay ! 

" What is it that the crowd requite 
Thy love with hate, thy truth with 
lies? 

And but to faith, and not to sight. 
The walls of Freedom's temple rise ? 

"Yet do thy work; it shall succeed 
In thine or in another's day; 

And, if denied the victor's meed, 
Thou shalt not lack the toiler's 
pay. 60 

" Faith shares the future's promise; 
Love's 
Self -offering is a triumph won; 
And each good thought or action 
moves 
The dark world nearer to the sun. 

"Then faint not, falter not, nor plead 
Thy weakness; truth itself is strong; 



THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND 



461 



The lion's strength, the eagle's speed, 
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong. 

*' Thy nature, which, through fire and 
flood, 

To place or gain finds out its way, 70 
Hath power to seek the highest good. 

And duty's holiest call obey ! 

" Strivest thou in darkness ? — foes 
without 
In league with traitor thoughts 
within; 
Thy night-watch kept with trembling 
Doubt 
And pale Remorse the ghost of Sin ? 

"Hast thou not, on some week of 
storm. 

Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair, 
And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form 

The curtains of its tent of prayer ? 80 

"So, haply, when thy task shall end, 
The wrong shall lose itself in right. 

And all thy week-day darkness blend 
With the long Sabbath of the light ! " 



THE NEW EXODUS 

By fire and cloud, across the desert 
sand. 
And through the parted waves, 
From their long bondage, with an out- 
stretched hand, 
God led the Hebrew slaves ! 

Dead as the letter of the Pentateuch, 

As Egypt's statues cold. 
In the adytum of the sacred book 

Now stands that marvel old. 

" Lo, God is great ! " the simple Mos- 
lem says. 
We seek the ancient date, 
Turn the dry scroll, and make that liv- 
ing phrase 
A dead one: " God was great ! " 

And, like the Coptic monks by Mou- 
sa's wells, 
We dream of wonders past, 
Vague as the tales the wandering 
Arab tells. 
Each drowsier than the last. 



O fools and blind! Above the Pyra- 
mids 
Stretches once more that hand. 
And tranced Egypt, from her stonv 
lids. 
Flings back her veil of sand. 

And morning-smitten Memnon, sing- 
ing, wakes; 
And, listening by his Nile, 
O'er Ammon's grave and awful visage 
breaks 
A sweet and human smile. 

Not as before, with hail and fire, and 
call 
Of death for midniglit graves, 
But in the stillness of tlie noonday, 
fall 
The fetters of the slaves. 

No longer through the Red Sea, as of 
old. 
The bondmen walk dry shod; 
Through hunum hearts, by love of 
Him controlled, 
Runs now that path of God ! 



THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND 

Across the frozen marshes 
The winds of autumn blow, 

And the fen-lands of the Wetter 
Are white with early snow. 

But where the low, gray head- 
lands 

Look o'er the BaUic brine, 
A bark is sailing in the track 

Of England's battle-line. 

N6 wares hath she to ixirter 

For Bothnia's fi.sh and grain; 10 

She saileth not for ploa.sure, 
She saileth not for gain. 

But still by isle or mainland 
She drojDS lier anclior down, 

Where'er the British cannon 
Rained fire on tower and town. 

Outspake the ancient Amtman, 
At the gate of Holsingfors: 

" Why comes this ship a-spying 
In "the track of England's wars ? " ao 



462 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



"God bless her," said the coast- 
guard, — 

" God bless the ship, I say. 
The holy angels trim the sails 

That speed her on her way ! 

" Where'er she drops her anchor. 
The peasant's heart is glad; 

Where'er she spreads her parting 
sail. 
The peasant's heart is sad. 

" Each wasted town and hamlet 
She visits to restore; _ 30 

To roof the shattered cabin. 
And feed the starving poor. 

" The sunken boats of fishers, 
The foraged beeves and grain, 

The spoil of flake and storehouse. 
The good ship brings again. 

" And so to Finland's sorrow 
The sweet amend is made, 

As if the healing hand of Christ 

Upon her wounds were laid ! " 40 

Then said the gray old Amtman, 
" The will of God be done ! 

The battle lost by England's hate 
By England's love is won ! 

" We braved the iron tempest 
That thundered on our shore; 

But when did kindness fail to find 
The key to Finland's door ? 

" No more from Aland's ramparts 
Shall warning signal come, so 

Nor startled Sweaborg hear again 
The roll of midnight drum. 

" Beside our fierce Black Eagle 
The Dove of Peace shall rest; 

And in the mouths of cannon 
The sea-bird make her nest. 

" For Finland, looking seaward, 

No coming foe shall scan; 
And the holy bells of Abo 

Shall ring, ' Good-will to man ! ' 60 

"Then row thy boat, O fisher! 

In peace on lake and bay; 
And thou, young maiden, dance again 

Around "the poles of May ! 



" Sit down, old men, together, 
Old wives, in quiet spin; 

Henceforth the Anglo-Saxon 
Is the brother of the Finn!" 



THE EVE OF ELECTION 

From gold to gray 

Our mild sweet day 
Of Indian Summer fades too soon; 

But tenderly 

Above the sea 
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's 
moon. 

In its pale fire, 

The village spire 
Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance; 

The painted walls 10 

Whereon it falls 
Transfigured stand in marble trance ! 

O'er fallen leaves 

The west-wind grieves. 
Yet comes a seed-time round again; 

And morn shall see 

The State sown free 
With baleful tares or healthful grain. 

Along the street 

The shadows meet 20 

Of Destiny, whose hands conceal 

The moulds of fate 

That shape the State, 
And make or mar the common weal. 

Around I see 

The powers that be; 
I stand by Empire's primal springs; 

And princes meet. 

In every street, 
And hear the tread of uncrowned 
kings ! 30 

Hark ! through the crowd 

The laugh runs loud. 
Beneath the sad, rebuking moon. 

God save the land 

A careless hand 
May shake or swerve ere morrow's 
noon ! 

No jest is this; 
One cast amiss 
May blast the hope of Freedom's year. 



FROM PERUGIA 



463 



Oh, take me where 40 

Are hearts of prayer, 
And foreheads bowed in reverent fear ! 

Not Hghtly faU 

Beyond recall 
The written scrolls a breath can float; 

The crowning fact, 

The kingliest act 
Of Freedom is the freeman's vote ! 

For pearls that gem 

A diadem so 

The diver in the deep sea dies; 

The regal right 

We boast to-night 
Is ours through costlier sacrifice; 

The blood of Vane, 

His prison pain 
Who traced the path the Pilgrim 
trod, 

And hers whose faith 

Drew strength from death, 
And prayed her Russell up to God ! 60 

Our hearts grow cold. 

We lightly hold 
A right which brave men died to gain; 

The stake, the cord. 

The axe, the sword, 
Grim nurses at its birth of pain. 

The shadow rend, 
And o'er us bend, 
O martyrs, with your crowns and 
palms; 
Breathe through these throngs 70 
Your battle songs. 
Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon 
psalms ! 

Look from the sky, 

Like God's great eye. 
Thou solemn moon, with searching 
beam. 

Till in the sight 

Of thy pure light 
Our mean self-seekings meaner seem. 

Shame from our hearts 

Unworthy arts, ^o 

The fraud designed, the purpose dark; 

And smite away 

The hands we lay 
Profanely on the sacred ark. 



To party claims 

And private aims. 
Reveal tliat august face of Truth, 

Whereto are given 

The age of heaven, 
The beauty of immortal youth. 



90 



So shall our voice 

Of sovereign choice 
Swell the deep bass of duty done, 

And strike the key 

Of time to be, 
When God and man shall speak as 
one! 



FROM PERUGIA 

The tall, sallow guardsmen their 
horsetails have spread, 

Flaming out in their violet, yellow, 
and red; 

And behind go the lackeys in crimson 
and buff, 

And the chamberlains gorgeous in vel- 
vet and ruff; 

Next, in red-legged pomp, come the 
cardinals forth, 

Each a lord of tlie cliurch and a prince 
of the earth. 

What's this squeak of the fife, and 

this batter of drum ? 
Lo! the Swiss of the Church from 

Perugia come; 
Tiie militant angels, whose saljres 

drive home 
To the hearts of the malcontents, 

cursed and abhorred, »o 

The good Fatlier's missives, and 

"Thussaitli the Lord!" 
And lend to his logic the point of the 

sword ! 

O maids of Etruria. gazing forlorn 
O'er dark Thra.symenus, dishovclled 

and torn ! 
O fathers, who pluck at your gray 

beards for shame ! 
O mothers, struck dumb by a woe 

without name ! 
Well ye know how the Holy Clmrch 

hireling behaves, 
And fiis tender compassion of pri.sons 

and graves ! 



464 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



There they stand, the hired stabbers, 

th(^ blood-stains yet fresh, 
That splashed hke red wine from the 

vintage of flesh; 20 

Grim instruments, careless as pincers 

and rack 
How the joints tear apart, and the 

strained sinews crack; 
But the hate that glares on them is 

sharp as their swords, 
And the sneer and the scowl print the 

air with fierce words ! 

Off with hats, down with knees, shout 
your vivas like mad ! 

Here's the Pope in his holiday right- 
eousness clad. 

From shorn crown to toe-nail, kiss- 
worn to the quick. 

Of sainthood in purple the pattern 
and pick. 

Who the role of the priest and the sol- 
dier unites, 

And, praying hke Aaron, like Joshua 
fights ! 30 

Is this Pio Nono the gracious, for 

whom ' 

We sang our hosannas and lighted all 

Rome; 
With whose advent we dreamed the 

new era began 
When the priest should be human, the 

monk be a man ? 
Ah, the wolf's with the sheep, and the 

fox with the fowl. 
When freedom we trust to the crosier 

and cowl ! 

Stand aside, men of Rome! Here's a 
hangman-faced Swiss — 

(A blessing for him surely can't go 
amiss) — 

Would kneel down the sanctified slip- 
per to kiss. 

Short shrift will suffice him, — he's 
blest beyond doubt; 40 

But there's blood on his hands which 
would scarcely wash out. 

Though Peter himself held the baptis- 
mal spout! 

Make way for the next! Here's an- 
other sweet son ! 

What's this mastiff-jawed rascal in 
epaulets done? 



He did, whispers rumor (its truth 

God forbid !), 
At Perugia what Herod at Bethlehem 

did. 
And the mothers ? Don't name them ! 

these humors of war 
They who keep him in service must 

pardon him for. 

Hist ! here's the arch-knave in a car- 
dinal's hat, 

With the heart of a wolf, and the 
stealth of a cat so 

(As if Judas and Herod together were 
rolled) , 

Who keeps, all as one, the Pope's con- 
science and gold, 

Mounts guard on the altar, and pilfers 
from thence. 

And flatters St. Peter while stealing 
his pence ! 

Who doubts Antonelli? Have mira- 
cles ceased 

When robbers say mass, and Barabbas 
is priest ? 

W^hen the Church eats and drinks, at 
its mystical board. 

The true flesh and blood carved and 
shed by its sword. 

When its martyr, unsinged, claps the 
crown on his head, 

And roasts, as his proxy, his neighbor 
instead ! 60 

There! the bells jow and jangle the 
same blessed way 

That they did when they rang for Bar- 
tholomew's day. 

Hark ! the tallow-faced monsters, nor 
women nor boys. 

Vex the air with a shrill, sexless horror 
of noise. 

Te Deum laudamus ! All round with- 
out stint 

The incense-pot swings with a taint of 
blood in 't ! 

And now for the blessing! Of little 

account, 
You know, is the old one they heard 

on the Mount. 
Its giver was landless. His raiment 

was poor. 
No jewelled tiara His fishermen 

wore; 70 



ITALY 




Perugia 



No incense, no lackeys, no riches, no 

home, 
No Swiss guards! We order things 

better at Rome. 

So bless us the strong hand, and curse 
us the weak; 

Let Austria's vulture have food for her 
beak; 

Let the wolf-whelp of Naples play 
Bomba again, 

With his death-cap of silence, and hal- 
ter, and chain; 

Put reason, and justice, and truth un- 
der ban; 

For the sin unforgiven is freedom for 
man 

ITALY 

Across the sea I heard the groans 

Of nations in the intervals 
Of wind and wave. Their blood and 

bones 
Cried out in torture, crushed by 
thrones, 
And sucked by priestly cannibals. 



I dreamed of Freedom slowly gained 
By martyr meekness, patience, faith, 

And lo! an atiilcte grimly stained. 

With corded muscles battle-strained. 
Shouting it from the fields of death ! 

I turn me, awe-struck , from the siglit, 
Among the clamoring thousands 
mute; 
I only know that Ood is right. 
And that the children of the light 
Shall tread the darkness under foot. 

I know the pent fire heaves its crust, 
That sultry skies the bolt will fonn 
To smite them clear; that Nature 

must 
The balance ot her powers adju.st. 
Thougli with the earthquake and the 
storm. 



God 



and let the earth re- 



reigns, 
joice ! 
I bow before His sterner plan. 
Dumb are the organs of my choice; 
He speaks in battle's stormy voice, 
His praise is in tlie wrath of man ! 



466 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Yet, surely as He lives, the day 

Of peace He promised shall be ours, 
To fold the flags of war, and lay 
Its sword and spear to rust away, 
And sow its ghastly fields with 
flowers ! 



FREEDOM IN BRAZIL 

With clearer light. Cross of the South, 
shine forth 
In blue Brazilian skies; 
And thou, O river, cleaving half the 
earth 
From sunset to sunrise. 
From the great mountains to the At- 
lantic waves 
Thy joy's long anthem pour. 
Yet a few years (God make them less !) 
and slaves 
Shall shame thy pride no more. 
No fettered feet thy shaded margins 
press; 
But all men shall walk free lo 

Where thou, the high-priest of the 
wilderness, 
Hast wedded sea to sea. 

And thou, great-hearted ruler, through 
whose mouth 
The word of God is said. 
Once more, " Let there be light ! " — 
Son of the South, 
Lift up thy honored head, 
Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert 

More than by birth thy own. 
Careless of watch and ward ; thou art 
begirt 
By grateful hearts alone. 20 

The moated wall and battle-ship may 
fail, 
But safe shall justice prove; 
Stronger than greaves of brass or iron 
mail 
The panoply of love. 

Crowned doubly by man's blessing 
and God's grace, 
Thy future is secure; 
Who frees a people makes his statue's 
place 
In Time's Valhalla sure. 
Lo ! from his Neva's banks the Scyth- 
ian Czar 
Stretches to thee his hand, 30 



Who, with the pencil of the Northern 
star. 
Wrote freedom on his land. 
And he whose grave is holy by our 
calm 
And prairied Sangamon, 
From his gaunt hand shall drop the 
martyr's palm 
To greet thee with "Well done!" 

And thou, O Earth, with smiles thy 
face make sweet, 
And let thy wail be stilled. 
To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat 
Her promise half fulfilled. 40 

The Voice that spake at Nazareth 
speaks still, 
No sound thereof hath died; 
Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal 
will 
Shall yet be satisfied. 
The years are slow, the vision tarrieth 
long. 
And far the end may be; 
But, one by one, the fiends of ancient 
wrong 
Go out and leave thee free. 



AFTER ELECTION 

The day's sharp strife is ended now. 
Our work is done, God knoweth how ! 
As on the thronged, unrestful town 
The patience of the moon looks down, 
I wait to hear, beside the wire. 
The voices of its tongues of fire. 

Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at 

first: 
Be strong, my heart, to know the 

worst ! 
Hark! there the Alleghanies spoke; 
That sound from lake and prairie 

broke. 
That sunset-gun of triumph rent 
The silence of a continent ! 

That signal from Nebraska sprung. 
This from Nevada's mountain tongue ! 
Is that thy answer, strong and free, 
O loyal heart of Tennessee ? 
What strange, glad voice is that which 

calls 
From AVagner's grave and Sumter's 

walls ? 



THE PROBLEM 



467 



From Mississippi's fountain-head 
A sound as of the bison's tread ! 
There rustled freedom's Charter Oak ! 
In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke ! 
Cheer answers cheer from rise to set 
Of sun. We have a country yet ! 

The praise, O God, be thine alone ! 
Thou givest not for bread a stone; 
Thou hast not led us through the night 
To bhnd us with returning light; 
Not through the furnace have we 

passed. 
To perish at its mouth at last. 

O night of peace, thy flight restrain! 
November's moon, be slow to wane! 
Shine on the freedman's cabin floor, 
On brows of prayer a blessing pour; 
And give, with full assurance blest, 
The weary heart of Freedom rest ! 
1868 

DISARMAMENT 

"Put up the sword!" The voice of 
Christ once more 

Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's 
roar, 

O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles 
reaped 

And left dry ashes; over trenches 
heaped 

With nameless dead; o'er cities starv- 
ing slow 

Under a rain of fire; through wards of 
woe 

Down which a groaning diapason runs 

From tortured brothers, husbands, 
lovers, sons 

Of desolate women in their far-off 
homes, 

Waiting to hear the step that never 
comes ! 

O men and brothers! let that voice 
be heard. 

War fails, try peace; put up the use- 
less sword ! 

Fear not the end. There is a story told 

In Eastern tents, when autumn nights 
grow cold, 

And round the fire the Mongol shep- 
herds sit 

With grave responses listening unto 
it: 



Once, on the errands of his mercy bent, 

Buddha, the holy and benevolent, 

Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of 
look. 

Whose awful voice the hills and for- 
ests shook. 

"O son of peace!" the giant cried, 
" thy fate 

Is sealed at last, and love shall yield 
to iiate." 

The unarmed Buddha looking, witli no 
trace 

Of fear or anger, in the monster's face, 

In pity said: " Poor fiend, even thee I 
love." 

Lo ! as he spake the sky-tail terror 
sank 

To hand-breadth size; the huge ab- 
horrence slirank 

Into the form and fashion of a dove; 

And where the thunder of its rage was 
heard, 

Circling above him sweetly sang the 
bird : 

"Hate hath no harm for love," so ran 
the song; 

"And peace unweaponed conquers 
every wrong ! 



THE PROBLEM 
I 

Not without envy Wealth at times 
must look 

On their brown strength who wield 
tiie reaping-hook 
And scythe, or at the forge-fire 
shape the plough 

Or the steel harness of the steeds of 
steam ; 
All who, by skill and patience, any- 
how 

Make service noble, and the earth re- 
deem 

From savageness. By kingly accolade 

Than theirs was never worthier 
knightliood made. 

Well for them, if. while demagogues 
tiieir vain 

And evil counsels proffer, they main- 
tain 
Their honest manhood unseduced. 
and wage 

No war with Labor's right to Labor's 
gain 



468 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 




•' Not without envy Wealth at times must look 

On their brown strength who wield the reaping-hook 



Of sweet home-comfort, rest of hand 
and brain, 
And softer pillow for the head of 
Age. 



II 



And well for Gain if it ungrudging 

yields 
Labor its just demand; and well for 

Ease 
If in the uses of its own, it sees 



No wrong to him who tills its pleasant 
fields 
And spreads the table of its luxu- 
ries. 

The interests of the rich man and the 
poor 

Are one and same, inseparable ever- 
more; 

And, when scant wage or labor fail to 
give 

Food, shelter, raiment, wherewithal to 
live, 



OUR COUNTRY 



469 



Need has its rights, necessity its 

claim. 
Yea, even self-wrought misery and 

shame 
Test well the charity suffering long 

and kind. 
The home-pressed question of the age 

can find 
No answer in the catch-words of the 

blind 
Leaders of blind. Solution there is 

none 
Save in the Golden Rule of Christ 

alone. 



OUR COUNTRY 

READ AT WOODSTOCK, CONN., JULY 4, 

1883. 

We give thy natal day to hope, 
O Country of our love and prayer ! 

Thy way is down no fatal slope, 
But up to freer sun and air. 

Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet 
By God's grace only stronger made, 

In future tasks before thee set 

Thou shalt not lack the old-time 
aid. 

The fathers sleep, but men remain 
As wise, as true, and brave as 
they; '° 

Why count the loss and not the 
gain? 
The best is that we have to-day. 

Whate'er of folly, shame, or crime. 
Within thy mighty bounds tran- 
spires. 

With speed defying space and time, 
Comes to us on the accusing wires; 

While of thy wealth of noble deeds, 
Thy homes of peace, thy votes un- 
sold. 
The love that pleads for human 
needs, . 

The wrong redressed, but half is 
told ! 

We read each felon's chronicle, 

His acts, his words, his gallows- 
mood; 



We know the single sinner well 
And not the nine and ninety good. 

Yet if, on daily scandals fed. 

We seem at times to doubt thy 
worth. 

We know thee still, when all is said, 
The best and dearest spot on eartli. 

From the warm Mexic Gulf, or where 
Belted with flowers Los Angeles 30 

Basks in the semi-tropic air. 

To where Katahdin's cedar trees 

Are dwarfed and bent by Northern 
winds. 

Thy plenty's horn is yearly filled; 
Alone, the rounding century finds 

Thy liberal soil by free hands tilled. 

A refuge for the wronged and poor. 
Thy generous heart has borne the 
blame 
That, with them, through thy open 
door. 
The old world's evil outcasts came. 

But, with thy just and equal rule, 41 
And labor's need and breadth of 
lands. 
Free press and rostrum, church and 
school, 
Thy sure, if slow, transforming 
hands 

Shall mould even them to thy designs, 
Making a blessing of the ban; 

And Freedom's chemistry combine 
The alien elements of man. 

The power that broke their prison bar 
And set the duskv millions free, so 

And welded in the flame of war 
The l^nion fast to Liberty, 

Shall it not deal with other ills. 

Redress the red man's grievance, 
1 )roak 
The Ciroean cup wliich shames and 
kills, 
And Labor full ro(i\iital make? 

Alone to such as fitly bear 

Thy civic honors l)id them fall ? 

And call thv daugliters forth to share 
The rights and duties pledged to all ? 



470 



SONGS OF LABOR AND REFORM 



Give every child his right of school, 6i 
Merge private greed in public good, 

And spare a treasury overfull 
The tax upon a poor man's food ? 

No lack was in thy primal stock, 
No weakling founders builded here; 

Thine were the men of Plymouth Rock, 
The Huguenot and Cavalier; 



That word still echoes round the 
world, 8 1 

And all who hear it turn to thee, 
And read upon thy flag unfurled 

The prophecies of destiny. 

Thy great world-lesson all shall learn, 
The nations in thy school shall 
sit, 




Ami the iluot ot the gniideil grain, 
Instead of the blood of the slain, 

Shall sprinkle thy banks, Big Horn ! " 



And 



they whose firm endurance 

gained 
The freedom of the souls of men, 70 
Whose hands, unstained with blood, 

maintained 
The swordless commonwealth of 

Penn. 

And thine shall be the power of all 
To do the work which duty bids. 

And make the people's council hall 
As lasting as the Pyramids ! 

Well have thy later years made good 
Thy brave-said word a century 
back, 

The pledge of human brotherhood, 
The equal claim of white and black. 



Earth's farthest mountain-tops shall 
burn 
With watch-fires from thy own uplit. 

Great without seeking to be great 
By fraud or conquest, rich in gold, go 

But richer in the large estate 

Of virtue which thy children hold. 

With peace that comes of purity 
And strength to simple justice due, 

So runs our loyal dream of thee; 
God of our fathers ! make it true. 

O Land of lands ! to thee we give 
Our prayers, our hopes, our service 
free; 

For thee thy sons shall nobly live, 99 
And at thv need shall die for thee ! 



ON THE BIG HORN 



471 



ON THE BIG HORN 

The years are but half a score, 
And the war-whoop sounds no more 

With the blast of bugles, where 
Straight into a slaughter pen. 
With his doomed three hundred men, 

Rode the chief with the yellow hair. 

O Hampton, down by the sea! 
What voice is beseeching thee 

For the scholar's lowliest place ? 
Can this be the voice of him 10 

Who fought on the Big Horn's rim ? 

Can this be Rain-in-the-Face ? 

His war-paint is washed away, 
His hands have forgotten to slay; 

He seeks for himself and his race 
The arts of peace and the lore 
That give to the skilled hand more 

Than the spoils of war and chase. 

O chief of the Christ-like school ! 
Can the zeal of thy heart grow cool 20 

When the victor scarred with fight 
Like a child for thy guidance craves. 
And the faces of hunters and braves 

Are turning to thee for light ? 

The hatchet lies overgrown 
With grass by the Yellowstone, 
Wind River, and Paw of Bear; 



And, in sign that foes are friends. 
Each lodge like a peace-pipe sends 
Its smoke in the quiet air. 30 

The hands that liave done the wrong 
To right the wronged are strong. 

And the voice of a nation saith: 
" Enough of the war of swords. 
Enough of the lying words 

And shame of a broken faith ! " 

The hills that have watched afar 
The valleys ablaze with war 

Shall look on the tasselled corn; 
And the dust of tlie grinded grain, 40 
Instead of the blood of the slain, 

Shall sprinkle thy banks, Big Horn ! 

The Ute and the wandering Crow 
Shall know as the white men know, 

And fare as the white men fare; 
The pale and the red shall be iirothers, 
One's rights shall l)e as another's, 

Home, School, and House of 
Prayer ! 

O mountains that climb to snow, 

O river winding below, so 

Through meadows by war once 
trod, 
O wild, waste lands that await 
The harvest exceeding great. 

Break forth into praise of God ! 




Raphael 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



MEMORIES 

A BEAUTIFUL and happy girl, 

With step as Hght as summer 
air, 
Eyes glad with smiles, and l)row of 

pearl, 
Shadowed hv many a careless curl 
Of unconfined and flowing hair; 



A seeming child in everything, 

Save thoughtful brow and ripening 
charms. 

As Nature wears the smile of Spring 
When sinking into Summer's arms. 

A mind rejoicing in the light lo 

Which melted through its graceful 
bower, 



RAPHAEL 



473 



Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright, 
And stainless in its holy white, 

Unfolding like a morning flower: 
A heart, which, hke a fine-toned lute. 

With every breath of feeling woke. 
And, even w^hen the tongue was mute, 

From eye and lip in music spoke. 

How thrills once more the lengthening 
chain 
Of memory, at the thought of 
thee ! 20 

Old hopes which long in dust have lain, 
Old dreams, come thronging back 
again, 
And boyhood lives again in me; 
I feel its glow upon my cheek, 

Its fulness of the heart is mine. 
As when I learned to hear thee speak. 
Or raised my doubtful eye to thine. 

I hear again thy low replies, 

I feel thy arm within my own. 
And timidly again uprise 30 

The fringed -lids of hazel eyes. 

With soft brown tresses overblown. 
Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves. 

Of moonlit wave and willowy way. 
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves, 

And smiles and tones more dear 
than they ! 

Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled 

My picture of thy youth to see. 
When, half a woman, half a child. 
Thy very artlessness beguiled, 40 

And folly's self seemed wise in thee; 
I too can smile, when o'er that hour 

The lights of memory backward 
stream, 
Yet feel the while that manhood's 
power 

Is vainer than my boyhood's dream. 

Years have passed on, and left their 
trace. 
Of graver care and deeper thought; 
And unto me the calm, cold face 
Of manhood, and to thee the grace 

Of woman's pensive beauty brougiit. 
More wide, perchance, for blame than 
praise, 51 

The school-boy's humble name has 
flown; 
Thine, in the green and quiet ways 
Of unobtrusive goodness known. 



And wider yet in thought and deed 

Diverge our pathways, one in vouth ; 
Thine the Genevan's sternest creed. 
While answers to my spirit's need 

The Derby dalesnian's simple truth. 
For tiiee, the priestly rite and prayer, 

And holy day, and solemn p.salm; <>t 
For me, tiie silent reverence where 

My brethren gather, slow and calm. 

Yet hath tiiy spirit left on me 

An impress Time has worn not out. 
And something of myself in thee, 
A shadow from the past, I see, 

Lingering, even yet, thy way about; 
Not wholly can the heart unlearn 

That lesson of its better hours, 70 
Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn 

To common dust that path of flow- 
ers. 

Thus, while at times before our eyes 
The shadows melt, and fall apart. 
And, smiling through them, round us 

lies 
The warm light of our morning 
skies, — 
The Indian Summer of the heart ! 
In secret sympathies of mind. 

In founts of feeling which retain 
Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may 
find «o 

Our earlv dreams not whoUv vain! 



RAPHAEL 

I SHALL not soon forget that sight: 
The glow of Autunm's westering 
day, 

A hazy warmth, a dreamy light. 
On Raphael's picture lay. 

It was a .simple print I saw, 
The fair face of a musing boy; 

Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe 
Seemed blending with my joy. 

A single print. — the graceful flow 
Of boyhood's .soft and wavy iiair, 10 

And fresh young lip and cheek, and 
brow 
Unmarked and clear, were there. 

Yet through its sweet and calm repose 
I saw the inward spirit shine; 



474 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



It was as if before me rose 
The white veil of a shrine. 

As if, as Gothland's sage has told, 
The hidden life, the man within. 

Dissevered from its frame and mould, 
By mortal eye were seen. 20 

Was it the lifting of that eye, 

The waving of that pictured hand ? 

Loose as a cloud-wreath on the 
sky, 
I saw the walls expand. 

The narrow room had vanished, — 
space, 
Broad, luminous, remained alone, 
Through which all hues and shapes of 
grace 
And beauty looked or shone. 

Around the mighty master came 
The marvels which his pencil 
wrought, 30 

Those miracles of power whose fame 
Is wide as human thought. 

There drooped thy more than mortal 
face, 

O Mother, beautiful and mild ! 
Enfolding in one dear embrace 

Thy Saviour and thy Child ! 

The rapt brow of the Desert John; 

The awful glory of that day 
When all the Father's brightness 
shone 

Through manhood's veil of clay, 40 

And, midst gray prophet forms, and 
wild 

Dark visions of the days of old. 
How sweetly woman's beauty smiled 

Through locks of brown and gold ! 

There Fornarina's fair young face 
Once more upon her lover shone, 

Whose model of an angel's grace 
He borrowed from her own. 



my 



Slow passed that vision from 
view, 

But not the lesson which it taught; 
The soft, calm shadows which it 
threw 5 1 

Still rested on my thought: 



The truth, that painter, bard and sage, 
Even in Earth's cold and changeful 
clime, 

Plant for their deathless heritage 
The fruits and flowers of time. 

We shape ourselves the joy or fear, 
Of which the coming life is made, 

And fill our Future's atmosphere 
With sunshine or with shade. 60 

The tissue of the Life to be 

We weave with colors all our own. 
And in the field of Destiny 

We reap as we have sown. 

Still shall the soul around it call 
The shadows which it gathered here, 

And, painted on the eternal wall, 
The Past shall reappear. 

Think ye the notes of holy song 69 
On Milton's tuneful ear have died? 

Think ye that Raphael's angel throng 
Has vanished from his side ? 

Oh no ! — We live our life again; 

Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, 
The pictures of the Past remain, — 

Man's works shall follow him ! 



EGO 

WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF A FRIEND 

On page of thine I cannot trace 
The cold and heartless commonplace, 
A statue's fixed and marble grace. 

For ever as these lines I penned. 
Still with the thought of thee will 

blend 
That of some loved and common friend, 

Who in life's desert track has made 
His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed 
Beneath the same remembered shade. 

And hence my pen unfettered moves 10 
In freedom which the heart approves. 
The negligence which friendship loves. 

And wilt thou prize my poor gift less 
For simple air and rustic dress, 
And sign of haste and carelessness ? 



EGO 



475 



Oh, more than specious counterfeit 

Of sentiment or studied wit, 

A heart hke thine should value it. 

Yet half I fear my gift will be 

Unto thy book, if not to thee, 20 

Of more than doubtful courtesy. 

A banished name from Fashion's 

sphere, 
A lay unheard of Beauty's ear, 
Forbid, disowned, — what do they 

here ? 

Upon my ear not all in vain 

Came the sad captive's clanking chain, 

The groaning from his bed of pain. 

And sadder still, I saw the woe 
Which only wounded spirits know 
When Pride's strong footsteps o'er 
them go. 30 

Spurned not alone in walks abroad, 
But from the temples of the Lord 
Thrust out apart, like things abhorred. 

Deep as I felt, and stern and strong, 
In words which Prudence smothered 

long. 
My soul spoke out against the wrong; 

Not mine alone the task to speak 
Of comfort to the poor and weak. 
And dry the tear on Sorrow's cheek; 

But, mingled in the conflict warm, 40 
To pour the fiery breath of storm 
Through the harsh trumpet of Re- 
form; 

To brave Opinion's settled frown, 
From ermined robe and saintly gown. 
While wrestling reverenced Error 
down. 

Founts gushed beside my pilgrim 

wav, 
Cool shadows on the greensward lay. 
Flowers swung upon the bending 

spray. 

And, broad and bright, on eitiier hand, 
Stretched the green slopes of Fairy- 
land, 5° 
With Hope's eternal sunbow spanned; 



Whence voices called me like the 

flow, 
Which on the listener's ear will grow, 
Of forest streamlets soft and low. 

And gentle eyes, which still retain 
Their picture on the heart and brain, 
Smiled, beckoning from that path of 
pain. 

In vain! nor dream, nor rest, nor 

pause 
Remain for him who round him draws 
The battered mail of Freedom's 

cause. 60 

From youthful hopes, from each green 

spot 
Of young Romance, and gentle 

Thought, 
Where storm and tumult enter not; 

From each fair altar, where belong 
The offerings Love refjuires of Song 
In homage to her bright-eyed throng; 

With soul and strength, with heart 

and hand, 
I turned to Freedom's struggling band, 
To the sad Helots of our land. 

What marvel then that Fame should 
turn 70 

Her notes of praise to those of scorn ; 

Her gifts reclaimed, her smiles with- 
drawn ? 

What matters it ? a few years more, 
Life's surge so rostle.ss iiorotofore 
Shall break upon the unknown shore ! 

In that far land shall di.sanpear 
The shadows which we follow here, 
The mist-wreaths of our atmosphere ! 

Before no work of mortal hand. 

Of human will or strength expand 80 

The pearl gates of the Better Land; 

Alone in that great love which gave 
Life to the sleeper of the grave, 
Resteth the power to seek and save. 

Yet, if the spirit gazing through 

The vista of the past can view 

One deed to Heaven and virtue true; 



476 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



If through the wreck of wasted powers, 
Of garlands wreathed from Folly's 

bowers, 
Of idle aims and misspent hours, go 

The eye can note one sacred spot 

By Pride and Self profaned not, 

A green place in the waste of thought, 

Where deed or word hath rendered less 
The sum of human wretchedness. 
And Gratitude looks forth to bless; 

The simple burst of tenderest feeling 
From sad hearts worn by evil-dealing, 
For blessing on the hand of healing; 

Better than Glory's pomp will be loo 
That green and blessed spot to me, 
A palm-shade in Eternity ! 

Something of Time which may invite 
The purified and spiritual sight 
To rest on with a calm delight. 

And when the summer winds shall 

sweep 
With their light wings my place of 

sleep. 
And mosses round my headstone 

creep; 

If still, as Freedom's rallying sign. 
Upon the young heart's altars shine i lo 
The very fires they caught from mine; 

If words my lips once uttered still, 
In the calm faith and steadfast will 
Of other hearts, their work fulfil; 

Perchance with joy the soul may learn 
These tokens, and its eye discern 
The fires which on those altars burn; 

A marvellous joy that even then 

The spirit hath its life again 

In the strong hearts of mortal men, 120 

Take, lady, then, the gift I bring. 

No gay and graceful offering. 

No flower-smile of the laughing spring. 

Midst the green buds of Youth's fresh 

May, 
With Fancy's leaf-en woven bay. 
My sad and sombre gift I lay. 



And if it deepens in thy mind 

A sense of suffering human-kind, — 

The outcast and the spirit-blind; 129 

Oppressed and spoiled on every side. 
By Prejudice, and Scorn, and Pride, 
Life's common courtesies denied; 

Sad mothers mourning o'er their trust, 
Children by want and misery nursed, 
Tasting life's bitter cup at first; 

If to their strong appeals which 

come 
From fireless hearth, and crowded 

room. 
And the close alley's noisome gloom, — ■ 

Though dark the hands upraised to 

thee 
In mute beseeching agony, 140 

Thou lend'st thy woman's sympathy; 

Not vainly on thy gentle shrine, 
Where Love, and Mirth, and Friend- 
ship twine 
Their varied gifts, I offer mine. 



THE PUMPKIN 

Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of 

the sun, 
The vines of the gourd and the rich 

melon run. 
And the rock and the tree and the 

cottage enfold. 
With broad leaves all greenness and 

blossoms all gold, 
Like that which o'er Nineveh's pro- 
phet once grew. 
While he waited to know that his 

warning was true. 
And longed for the storm-cloud, and 

listened in vain 
For the rush of the whirlwind and red 

fire-rain. 

On the banks of the Xenil the dark 

Spanish maiden 
Comes up with the fruit of the tangled 

vine laden; 10 

And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to 

behold 
Through orange-leaves shining the 

broad spheres of gold; 



THE PUMPKIN 




"On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth " 



Yet with dearer delight from his home 
in the North, 

On the fields of his harvest the Yan- 
kee looks forth, 

Where crook-necks are coiling and yel- 
low fruit shines, 

And the sun of September melts down 
on his vines. 

Ah ! on Thanksgiving day, when from 
East and from West, 

From North and from South come the 
pilgrim and guest; 

When the gray-haired New Englander 
sees round his board 

The old broken links of affection re- 
stored; 20 



When the care-weariod man seeks liis 

mother once more, 
Andthe worn matron smiles wliorr the 

girl smiled i^efore; 
What moistens the lip and what 

brightens the eye, 
What calls back tlie past, like tlio rich 

Pumpkin pie? 

Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old 

davs recalling. 
When wood-grapes were purpling and 

brown nuts were falling ! 
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its 

skin. 
Glaring out through the dark with a 

candle within 1 



478 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



When we laughed round the corn- 
heap, with hearts all in tune, 

Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our 
lantern the moon, 30 

Telling tales of the fairy who travelled 
like steam. 

In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two 
rats for her team ! 

Then thanks for thy present! none 
sweeter or better 

E'er smoked from an oven or circled a 
platter ! 

Fairer hands never wrought at a pas- 
try more fine. 

Brighter eyes never watched o'er its 
baking, than thine ! 

And the prayer, which my mouth is too 
full to express, 

Swells my heart that thy shadow may 
never be less. 

That the days of thy lot may be length- 
ened below. 

And the fame of thy worth like a 
pumpkin-vine grow, 

And thy life be as sweet, and its last 
sunset sky 

Golden-tinted and fair as thy own 
Pumpkin pie ! 



FORGIVENESS 

My heart was heavy, for its trust had 
been 
Abused, its kindness answered with 
foul wrong; 
So, turning gloomily from my fellow- 
men. 
One summer Sabbath day I strolled 
among 
The green mounds of the village burial- 
place; 
Where, pondering how all human 

love and hate 
Find one sad level; and how, soon 
or late, 
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with 
meekened face. 
And cold hands folded over a still 
heart. 
Pass the green threshold of our com- 
mon grave, 
Whither all footsteps tend, whence 
none depart. 
Awed for myself, and pitying my race, 



Our common sorrow, like a mighty 
wave. 

Swept all my pride away, and trem- 
bling I forgave ! 



TO MY SISTER 

WITH A COPY OF " THE SUPERNATU- 
RALISM OF NEW ENGLAND" 

Dear Sister ! while the wise and sage 
Turn coldly from my playful page. 
And count it strange that ripened 
age 

Should stoop to boyhood's folly; 
I know that thou wilt judge aright 
Of all which makes the heart more 

light. 
Or lends one star-gleam to the night 

Of clouded Melancholy. 

Away with weary cares and themes ! 
Swing wide the moonlit gate of 

dreams ! 10 

Leave free once more the land which 

teems 
With wonders and romances ! 
Where thou, with clear discerning 

eyes, 
Shalt rightly read the truth which lies 
Beneath the quaintly masking guise 
Of wild and wizard fancies. 

Lo ! once again our feet we set 

On still green wood-paths, twilight 

wet 
By lonely brooks, whose waters fret 

The roots of spectral beeches; 20 
Again the hearth-fire glimmers o'er 
Home's whitewashed wall and painted 

floor. 
And young eyes widening to the lore 

Of faery-folks and witches. 

Dear heart ! the legend is not vain 
Which lights that holy hearth again, 
And calling back from care and pain, 

And death's funereal sadness, 
Draws round its old familiar blaze 
The clustering groups of happier days, 
And lends to sober manhood's gaze 31 

A glimpse of childish gladness. 

And, knowing how my life hath been 
A weary work of tongue and oen. 



MY THANKS 



479 



A long, harsh strife with strong-willed 
men, 
Thou wilt not chide my turning 
To con, at times, an idle rhyme. 
To pluck a flower from childhood's 

clime, 
Or listen, at Life's noonday chime, 
For the sweet bells of Morning ! 40 



MY THANKS 

ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRE- 
SENTED TO A FRIEND 

'T IS said that in the Holy Land 
The angels of the place have blessed 

The pilgrim's l)ed of desert sand, 
Like Jacob's stone of rest. 

That down the hush of Syrian skies 
Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight 
sings 

The song whose holy symphonies 
Are beat by unseen wings; 

Till starting from his sandy bed, 
The wayworn wanderer looks to see 

The halo of an angel's head n 

Shine through the tamarisk-tree. 

So through the shadows of my way 
Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear, 

So at the weary close of day 
Hath seemed thy voice of cheer. 

That pilgrim pressing to his goal 
May pause not for the vision's sake, 

Yet all fair things within his soul 
The thought of it shall wake: 20 

The graceful palm-tree by the well, 
Seen on the far horizon's rim; 

The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle, 
Bent timidly on him; 

Each pictured saint, whose golden 
hair 
Streams sunlike through the con- 
vent's gloom; 
Pale shrines of martyrs young and 
fair. 
And loving Mary's tomb; 

And thus each tint or shade which falls, 
From sunset cloud or waving tree. 



Along my pilgrim path, recalls 
The pleasant thougiit of thee. 



Of one in sun and shade the same, 
In weal and woe my steadv friend, 

Whatever by that iioly name' 
The angels comprehend. 

Not blind to faults and follies, thou 
Hast never failed the good to see, 

Nor judged by one unsecnily bougli 
The upward-struggling tree. 40 

These light leaves at thy feet I lay, — 
Poor common thoughts on coiiiinon 
things, 

Which Time is shaking, day by day, 
Like feathers from liis wings; 

Chance shootings from a frail life-tree. 
To nurturing care but little kno\m. 

Their good was partly learned of tliee, 
Their folly is my own. 

That tree still clasps the kindly mould, 

Its leaves still drink the twilight 

dew, 50 

And weaving its pale green with 

gold. 

Still shines the sunlight tlirougii. 

There still the morning zephyrs 
play, 
And there at times the spring bird 
sings, 
And mossy trunk and fading spray 
Are flowered with glossy wings. 

Yet, even in genial sun and rain, 
Root, brancli, and leaflet fail and 
fade ; 

The wanderer on its lonely plain 
Erelong shall miss its shade. fto 

O friend beloved, whose curious skill 
Keeps bright the last year's leaves 
and flowers. 
With warm, glad, summer thoughts to 
fill 
The cold, dark, winter hours! 

Pressed on thy heart, tlie leaves I 
bring 

May well defy the wintry cold. 
Until", in Heaven's eternal spring, 

Life's fairer ones unfold. 



48o 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



REMEMBRANCE 

WITH COPIES OF THE AUTHOR'S 
WRITINGS 

Friend of mine ! whose lot was cast 
With me in the distant past; 
Where, hke shadows flitting fast, 

Fact and fancy, thought and theme. 
Word and work, begin to seem 
Like a half-remembered dream ! 

Touched by change have all things 

been, 
Yet I think of thee as when 
We had speech of lip and pen. 

For the calm thy kindness lent 
To a path of discontent, 
Rough with trial and dissent; 

Gentle words where such were few, 
Softening blame where blame was 

true, 
Praising where small praise was 

due; 

For a waking dream made good. 

For an id^al understood. 

For thy Christian womanhood; 

For thy marvellous gift to cull 
From our common life and dull 
Whatsoe'er is beautiful; 

Thoughts and fancies, Hybla's bees 
Dropping sweetness; true heart's-ease 
Of congenial sympathies; — 

Still for these I own my debt; 
Memory, with her eyelids wet. 
Fain would thank thee even yet ! 

And as one who scatters flowers 
Where the Queen of May's sweet hours 
Sits, o'ertwined with blossomed bow- 
ers, 

In superfluous zeal bestowing 
Gifts where gifts are overflowing. 
So I pay the debt I 'm owing. 

To thy full thoughts, gay or sad, 
Sunny-lmed or sober clad. 
Something of my own I add; 



Well assured that thou wilt take 
Even the offering which I make 
Kindly for the giver's sake. 



MY NAMESAKE 

You scarcely need my tardy thanks, 
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and 
tend — 
A green leaf on your own Green 
Banks — 
The memory of your friend. 

For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, 
hides 
The sobered brow and lessening 
hair : 
For aught I know, the myrtled sides 
Of Helicon are bare. 

Their scallop-shells so many bring 
The fabled founts of song to 
try, _ lo 

They 've drained, for aught I know, 
the spring 
Of Aganippe dry. 

Ah well ! — The wreath the Muses 
braid 

Proves often Folly's cap and bell; 
Methinks, my ample beaver's shade 

May serve my turn as well. 

Let Love's and Friendship's tender 
debt 

Be paid by those I love in life. 
Why should the unborn critic whet 

For me his scalping-knife ? 20 

Why should the stranger peer and 

pry 

One's vacant house of life about, 
And drag for curious ear and eye 
His faults and follies out ? — 

Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon, 
With chaff of words, the garb he 
wore. 

As corn-husks when the ear is gone 
Are rustled all the more ? 

Let kindly Silence close again, 

The picture vanish from the eye, 30 

And on the dim and misty main 
Let the small ripple die. 



MY NAMESAKE 



481 



Yet not the less I own your claim 
To grateful thanks, dear friends of 
mine. 

Hang, if it please you so, my name 
Upon your household line. 

Let Fame from brazen lips blow 
wide 

Her chosen names, I envy none: 
A mother's love, a father's pride. 

Shall keep alive my own ! 40 

Still shall that name as now recall 
The young leaf wet with morning 
dew, 

The glory where the sunbeams fall 
The breezy woodlands through. 

That name shall be a household word, 
A spell to waken smile or sigh; 

In many an evening prayer be heard 
And cradle lullaby. 

And thou, dear child, in riper days 
When asked the reason of thy 
name, so 

Shalt answer: ''One 'twere vain to 
praise 
Or censure bore the same. 

''Some blamed him, some believed 
him good, 
The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the 
two; 
He reconciled as best he could 
Old faith and fancies new. 

" In him the grave and playful mixed, 
And wisdom held with folly truce. 

And Nature compromised betwixt 
Good fellow and recluse. 60 

" He loved his friends, forgave his foes; 

And, if his words were harsh at 
times. 
He spared his fellow-men, — his blows 

Fell only on their crimes. 

"He loved the good and wise, but 
found 

His human heart to all akin 
Who met him on the common ground 

Of suffering and of sin. 

" Whate'er his neighbors might endure 
Of pain or grief his own became; 70 



For all the ills he could not cure 
He held himself to blame. 

" His good was mainly in intent, 
His evil not of forethought done; 

The work he wrought was rarely 
meant 
Or finished as begun. 

" 111 served his tides of feeling strong 
To turn the common mills of use; 

And, over restless wings of song, 
His birthright garb hung loose ! 80 

" His eye was beauty's powerless slave, 
And his the ear which discord 
pains; 

Few guessed beneath his aspect grave 
What passions strove in chains. 

"He had his share of care and pain, 
No holiday was life to him; 

Still in the heirloom cup we drain 
The bitter drop will swim. 

"Yet Heaven was kind, and here a 

bird 

And there a flower beguiled his 

way ; 90 

And cool, in summer noons, he heard 

The fountains plash and play. 

" On all his sad or restless moods 
The patient peace of Nature stole; 

The quiet of the fields and woods 
Sank deep into his soul. 

" He worshipped as his fathers did, 
And kept the faith of childisli days, 

And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid. 
He loved the good old ways; 100 

" The simple tastes, the kindly traits, 
The tranquil air, and g(>ntl(' speech. 

The silence of the soul that waits 
For more tiian man to tcacii. 

"The cant of party, school, and sect, 
Provoked at times his honest scorn, 

And Folly, in its gray respect, 
He tossed on satire's horn. 

" But still his heart was full of awe 
And reverence for all sacred things; 

And, brooding over form and law, m 
He saw the Spirit's wings 1 



482 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



"Life's mystery wrapt him like a 
cloud; 

He heard far voices mock his own, 
The sweep of wings unseen, the loud, 

Long roll of waves unknown. 

" The arrows of his straining sight 
Fell quenciied in darkness; priest 
and sage, 

Like lost guides calling left and right. 
Perplexed his doubtful age. 120 

"Like childhood, listening for the 
sound 

Of its dropped pebbles in the well. 
All vainly down tlie dark profound 

His brief-lined plummet fell. 

"So, scattering flowers with pious 
pains 
On old beliefs, of later creeds. 
Which claimed a place in Truth's do- 
mains. 
He asked the title-deeds. 

"He saw the old-time's groves and 
shrines 

In the long distance fair and dim; 130 
And heard, like sound of far-off pines. 

The century -mellowed hymn ! 

"He dared not mock the Dervish 
whirl, 
The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's 
spell ; 
God knew the heart ; Devotion's pearl 
Might sanctify the shell. 

" While others trod the altar stairs, 
He faltered like the publican; 

And, while they praised as saints, his 
prayers 
Were those of sinful man. 140 

" For, awed by Sinai's Mount of 
Ijaw, 
The trembling faith alone sufficed. 
That, through its cloud and flame, he 
saw 
The sweet, sad face of Christ ! 

"And listening, with his forehead 
bowed. 

Heard the Divine compassion fill 
The pauses of the trump and cloud 

With whispers small and still. 



" The words he spake, the thoughts he 
penned, 

Are mortal as his hand and brain, 150 
But, if they served the Master's end, 

He has not lived in vain !" 

Heaven make thee better than thy 
name. 
Child of my friends ! — For thee I 
crave 
What riches never bought, nor fame 
To mortal longing gave. 

I pray the prayer of Plato old: 
God make thee beautiful within. 

And let thine eyes the good behold 
In everything save sin ! 160 

Imagination held in check 

To serve, not rule, thy poised mind; 
Thy Reason, at the fro^vn or beck 

Of Conscience, loose or bind. 

No dreamer thou, but real all, — 
Strong manhood crowning vigorous 
youth; 

Life made by duty epical 

And rhythmic with the truth. 

So shall that life the fruitage yield 
Which trees of healing only give, 170 

And green-leafed in the Eternal field 
Of God, forever live ! 



A MEMORY 

Here, while the loom of Winter 
weaves 

The shroud of flowers and fountains, 
I think of thee and summer eves 

Among the Northern mountains. 

When thunder tolled the twilight's 
close, 

And winds the lake were rude on, 
And thou wert singing, Ca' the Yowes, 

The bonny yowes of Cluden ! 

When, close and closer, hushing 
breath. 
Our circle narrowed round thee, 
And smiles and tears made up the 
wreath 
Wherewith our silence crowned 
thee; 



MY DREAM 



483 



And, strangers all, we felt the ties 
Of sisters and of brothers; 

Ah ! wliose of all those kindly eyes 
Now smile upon another's ? 

The sport of Time, who still apart 
The waifs of life is flinging; 

Oh, nevermore shall heart to heart 
Draw nearer for that singing ! 

Yet when the panes are frosty-starred. 
And twilight's fire is gleaming, 

I hear the songs of Scotland's bard 
Sound softly through my dreaming ! 

A song that lends to winter snows 
The glow of summer weather, — 

Again I hear thee ca' the yowes 
To Cluden's hills of heather ! 

MY DREAM 

In my dream, methought I trod, 
Yesternight, a mountain road; 
Narrow as Al Sirat's span. 
High as eagle's flight, it ran. 

Overhead, a roof of cloud 
With its weight of thunder bowed; 
Underneath, to left and right, 
Blankness and abysmal night. 

Here and there a wild-flower blushed; 
Now and then a bird-song gushed; 10 
Now and then, through rifts of shade, 
Stars shone out, and sunbeams played. 

But the goodly company, 
Walking in that path with me, 
One by one the brink o'erslid, 
One by one the darkness hid. 

Some with wailing and lament, 
Some with cheerful courage went; 
But, of all who smiled or mourned, 
Never one to us returned. 20 

Anxiously, with eye and ear. 
Questioning that shadow drear. 
Never hand in token stirred, 
Never answering voice I heard ! 

Steeper, darker ! — lo ! I felt 
From my feet the pathway melt, 
Swallowed by the black despair. 
And the hungry jaws of air, 



Past the stony-throated caves, 
Strangled by the wash of waves, jo 
Past tlie splintered crags, I sank 
On a green and flowery bank, — 

Soft as fall of thistle-down. 
Lightly as a cloud is blown, 
Soothingly as childhood pressed 
To the bosom of its rest. 

Of the sliarf)-horned rocks instead. 
Green the grassy meadows spread, 
Bright with waters singing l)y 
Trees that propped a golden sky. 40 

Painless, trustful, sorrow-free, 
Old lost faces welcomed me. 
With whose sweetness of content 
Still expectant hope was blent. 

Waking while the dawning gray 
Slowly brightened into day. 
Pondering that vision fled, 
Thus unto myself I said: — 

"Steep and hung with clouds of 

strife 
Is our narrow path of life; so 

And our deatli the dreaded fall 
Through the dark, awaiting all. 

" So, with painful steps we climb 
Up the dizzy ways of time, 
Ever in the shadow shed 
By the forecast of our dread. 

" Dread of mystery solved alone, 
Of the untried and unknown; 
Yet the end thereof may seem 
Like the falling of my dream. 60 

"And this heart-consiuning care. 
All our fears of here or there, 
Change and absence, loss and 

death, 
Prove but simple lack of faith." 

Thou, O Most Oojnjia.'^sionate! 
Who didst stoop to our estate, 
Drinking of the cup we drain, 
Treading in our patli of pain, — 

Through the doubt and mystery, 
Grant to us thy steps to see, 70 

And the grace to draw from thence 
Larger hope and confidence. 



484 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



Show thy vacant tomb, and let, 
As of old, the angels sit, 
Whispering, by its open door: 
" Fear not ! He hath gone before ! " 



THE BAREFOOT BOY 

Blessings on thee, little man. 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! 
With thy turned-up pantaloons. 
And thy merry whistled tunes; 
With thy red lip, redder still 
Kissed by strawberries on the hill; 
With the sunshine on thy face. 
Through thy torn brim's jaunty 

grace ; 
From my heart I give thee joy, — 
I was once a barefoot boy ! 10 

Prince thou art, — the grown-up man 
Only is republican. 
Let the million-dollared ride ! 
Barefoot, trudging at his side, 
Thou hast more than he can buy 
In the reach of ear and eye, — 
Outward sunshine, inward joy: 
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy ! 

Oh for boyhood's painless play, 
Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 20 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules 
Knowledge never learned of schools, 
Of the wild bee's morning chase. 
Of the wild-flower's time and place, 
Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood; 
How the tortoise bears his shell. 
How the woodchuck digs his cell, 
And the ground-mole sinks his well; 
How the robin feeds her young, 30 
How the oriole's nest is hung; 
Wiiere the whitest lilies blow. 
Where the freshest berries grow. 
Where the ground-nut trails its vine. 
Where the wood-grape's clusters 

shine; 
Of the black wasp's cunning way, 
Mason of his walls of clay, 
And the architectural plans 
Of gray hornet artisans ! 
For, eschewing books and tasks, 40 
Nature answers all he asks; 
Hand in hand with her he walks, 
Face to face with her he talks, 
Part and parcel of her joy, — ■ 
Blessings on the barefoot boy ! 



Oh for boyhood's time of June, 
Crowding years in one brief moon, 
When all things I heard or saw, 
Me, their master, waited for. 
I was ricli in flowers and trees, 50 

Humming-birds and honey-bees; 
For my sport tlie squirrel played. 
Plied the snouted mole his spade; 
For my taste the blackberry cone 
Purpled over hedge and stone; 
Laughed the brook for my delight 
Through the day and through the 

night. 
Whispering at the garden wall. 
Talked with me from fall to fall; 
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 
Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 61 
Mine, on bending orchard trees, 
Apples of Hesperides ! 
Still as my horizon grew, 
Larger grew my riches too; 
All the world I saw or knew 
vSeemed a complex Chinese toy. 
Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 

Oh for festal dainties spread. 

Like my bowl of milk and bread; 70 

Pewi;er spoon and bowl of wood. 

On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 

O'er me, like a regal tent, 

Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent. 

Purple-curtained, fringed with gold. 

Looped in many a wind-swung fold; 

While for music came the play 

Of the pied frogs' orcaestra; 

And, to light the noisy choir. 

Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 80 

I was monarch: pomp and joy 

Waited on the barefoot boy ! 

Cheerily, then, my little man, 
Live and laugh, as boyhood can ! 
Though the flinty slopes be hard. 
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward. 
Every morn shall lead thee through 
Fresh baptisms of the dew; 
Every evening from thy feet 
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat : 90 
All too soon these feet must hide 
In the prison cells of pride, 
Lose the freedom of the sod. 
Tike a colt's for work be shod, 
Made to tread the mills of toil. 
Up and down in ceaseless moil: 
Happy if their track be found 
Never on forbidden ground; 



MY PSALM 



485 




" Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with clieek of tan !" 



Happy if thev sink not in 
Quick and treacherous sands of sm. 100 
Ah ! that tliou couldst know thy joy, 
Ere it passes, barefoot boy ! 

MY PSALM 

I MOURN no more my vanished years; 

Beneath a tender rain. 
An April rain of smiles and tears, 

My heart is young again. 



The west- winds blow, and, singing low, 
I hear the glad streams run; 

The windows of my soul 1 throw 
Wide open to the sun. 

No longer forward nor behind 

I look in hope or fear; '«» 

But, grateful, take the good I find. 
The best of now and here. 

I plough no more a desert land. 
To harvest weed and tare; 



486 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



The manna dropping from God's hand 
Rebukes my painful care. 

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay 

Aside' tiie toiling oar; 
The angel sought so far away 

I welcome at my door. 20 

The airs of spring may never play 
Among the ripening corn. 

Nor freslniess of the flowers of May 
Blow through the autumn morn ; 

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 
Through fringed lids to heaven. 

And the pale aster in the brook 
Shall see its image given ; — 

The woods shall wear their robes of 
praise. 

The south-wind softly sigh, - 30 
And sweet, calm days in golden haze 

Melt down the amber sky. 

Not less shall manly deed and word 
Rebuke an age of wrong; 

The graven flowers that wreathe the 
sword 
Make not the blade less strong. 

But smiting hands shall learn to 
heal, — 

To l)uild as to destroy; 
Nor less my heart for others feel 

That i the more enjoy. 40 

All as God wills, who wisely heeds 

To give or to withhold, 
And knoweth more of all my needs 

Than all my prayers have told ! 

Enough that blessings undeserved 
Have marked my erring track; 

That wheresoe'er my feet have 
swerved. 
His chastening turned me back; 

That more and more a Providence 
Of love is understood, so 

Making the springs of time and sense 
Sweet with eternal good; — 

That death seems but a covered way 

Whicli opens into liglit. 
Wherein no blinded child can stray 

Beyond the Father's sight; 



That care and trial seem at last, 
Through Memory's sunset air, 

Like mountain-ranges overpast, 

In purple distance fair; 60 

That all the jarring notes of life 
Seem blending in a psalm, 

And all the angles of its strife 
Slow rounding into calm. 

And so the shadows fall apart. 
And so the west-winds play; 

And all the windows of my heart 
I open to the day. 

THE WAITING 

I WAIT and watch: before my eyes 
Methinks the night grows thin and 
gray; 
I wait and watch the eastern skies 
To see the golden spears uprise 
Beneath the orifiamme of day ! 

Like one whose limbs are bound in 
trance 

I hear the day-sounds swell and grow, 
And see across the twilight glance, 
Troop after troop, in swift advance. 

The shining ones with plumes of snow! 

I know the errand of their feet, 

I know what mighty work is theirs; 
I can but lift up hands unmeet 
The threshing-floors of God to beat. 
And speed them with unworthy 
prayers. 

I will not dream in vain despair 

The steps of progress wait for me: 
The puny leverage of a hair 
The planet's impulse well may spare, 
A drop of dew the tided sea. 

The loss, if loss there be, is mine, 

And yet not mine if understood; 
For one shall grasp and one resign. 
One drink life's rue, and one its wine, 
And God shall make the balancegood. 

Oh power to do ! Oh baffled will ! 

Oh prayer and action ! ye are one. 
Who may not strive, may yet fulfil 
The harder task of standing still, 

And good but wished with God is 
done! 



SNOW-BOUND 



487 



SNOW-BOUND 

A WINTER IDYL 



TO THE MEMORY OF THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBE^ 
THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR 



"As the Spirit of Darkness be stronger 
in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be An- 
gels of Light, are augmented not only by 
the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our 
common Wood Fire : and as the Celestial 
Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this 
our Fire of Wood doth the same." — Con. 
Agrippa, Occult Fliilosophy, Book I. ch. v. 

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the 

fields. 
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river and the 

heaven, 
And veils the farm-house at the garden's 

end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's 

feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the house- 
mates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of Storm." 

Emerson, 'rAe Snow Storm. 

The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seeming less than threat, 
It sank from sight before it set. 
A chill no coat, however stout, 
Of homespun stuff could quite shut 

out, ^o 

A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 
That checked, mid-vein, the circling 

race 
Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
The coming of the snow-storm told. 
The wind blew east; we heard the roar 
Of Ocean on his wintry shore. 
And felt the strong pulse throbbmg 

there . 

Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 



Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, 
Brouglit in the wood from out of 

doors, 20 

Littered the stalls, and from tlie mows 
Raked down the herd'.s-gra.ss for the 

cows : 
Heard the horse whinny ing for his corn ; 
And, sliarply clashing horn on horn, 
Impatient down the stanchion rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
The cock his crested helmet bent 
And down his querulous challenge 

sent. 30 

Unwarmed by any simset light 
The gray day darkened into night, 
A night made hoary with the swarm 
And wliirl-dance of the blinding storm, 
As zigzag, wavering to and fro, 
Crossed and recrossed the winged 

snow : 
And ere the early bedtime came 
The white drift piled the window- 
frame. 
And througli the glass the clotlies-line 
posts -"» 

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 

So all niglit long tlie storm roared on: 
The morning I)roUe without a sun; 
In tiny spherule traccil with lines 
Of Nature's geometric signs. 
In starry flake, and pellicle. 
All dav the hoarv meteor fell; 
And, when tlie second morning .shone. 
We looked ui>on a world unknown. 
On nothing we could call our own. 
Around the glistening wonder bent so 
The l)lue walls of the firmament, 
No cloud above, no earth below, — 
A universe of sky and snow ! 



488 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 




"""""^ ^/ " -^^5fcf - - 



.-/ 



/ 



Mr- 



" A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 
A fenceless drift what once was road " 



The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvellous shapes; strange 

domes and towers 
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood; 
A smooth white mound the brush-pile 

showed, 
A fenceless drift what once was 

road; 
The bridle-post an old man sat 60 
With loose-flung coat and high cocked 

liat; 
The well-curb had a Chinese roof; 
And even the long sweep, higli aloof, 
In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 



A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father wasted: " Boys, a path ! " 
Well pleased (for when did farmer boy 
Count such a summons less than joy ?) 
Our buskins on our feet we drew; 70 
With mittened hands, and caps drawn 

low. 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 
We cut the solid whiteness through. 
And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid 
With dazzling crystal: we had read 
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 
And to our own his name we gave, 
With many a w^ish the luck were ours 
To test his lamp's supernal powers. 80 



SNOW-BOUND 



.89 




•• The cock his lusty greeting said, 
And fortli liis speckled harem led " 



We reached the barn with merry din, 
And roused the prisoned brutes 

within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out, 
And grave with wonder gazed about; 
The cock his lusty greeting said, 
And forth his speckled harem led; 
The oxen lashed their tails, and 

hooked. 
And mild reproach of hunger looked; 
The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
Like Egypt's Amun roused from 

sleep, 90 



Shook liis siige head with gesture mute, 
And emphasized witii stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 
The loosening drift its breath before; 
Low circling round its .southern zone, 
The sun through dazzling snow-mist 

shone. 
No church-l)ell lent its Chri.stian tone 
To the savage air, no social smoke 
Curled over woods of snow-liung oak. 
A solitude made more intense 100 

By dreary-voiced elements, 



490 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



The shrieking of the mindless wind, 
The moaning tree-boughs swaying 

bhnd, 
And on the glass the unmeaning beat 
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 
Beyond the circle of our hearth 
No welcome sound of toil or mirth 
Unbound the spell, and testified 
Of human life and thought outside. 
We minded that the sharpest ear no 
The buried l)rooklet could not hear, 
The music of whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship, 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 
To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the 

west. 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering 

bank. 
We piled, with care, our nightly 

stack 120 

Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush; then, hovering near. 
We watched the first red blaze appear. 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the 

gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging 

beam. 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 130 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 
While radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became. 
And through the bare-boughed lilac- 
tree 
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing 

free. 
The crane and pendent trammels 

showed. 
The Turks' heads on the andirons 

glowed; 
Wliile childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle, 
Wliispered the old rhyme: " Under the 

tree, 
When fire outdoors hums merrily, 
There the witches are making tea.'' 
The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood 
Transfigured in the silver flood, 



Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp 

ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness at their back. 150 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that un warming light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost-line back with tropic heat; 
And ever, when a louder blast 161 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed. 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
The great throat of the chimney 

laughed; 
The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head. 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 
And, for the winter fireside meet. 
Between the andirons' straddling feet. 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 171 
The apples sputtered in a row. 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood. 

What matter how the night behaved ? 
What matter how the north-wind 

raved ? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy 
- glow. 

O Time and Change ! — with hair as 

gray 
As was my sire's that winter day, iSo 
How strange it seems, with so much 

gone 
Of life and love, to still live on ! 
Ah, brother ! only I and thou 
Are left of all that circle now, — 
The dear home faces whereupon 
That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
Henceforward, listen as we will. 
The voices of that hearth are still; 
Look where we may, the wide earth 

o'er, 
Those lighted faces smile no more. 100 
We tread the paths their feet have 

worn. 



SNOW-BOUND 



491 




"We sped the time with stories old " 



We sit beneath their orchard trees. 

We hear, hke them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn; 
We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we hnger o'er. 
But in tlie sun they cast no sliade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

No step is on the conscious floor ! 

Yet Love will dream, and Faith will 

trust ^ _ 200 

(Since He who knows our need is just), 

That somehow, somewhere, meet we 

must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress- 
trees ! 



Who, hopeless, lavs his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marl)l('s play 1 
Who hath not learned, ill hours of faith. 

The truth to Hesh and sense un- 
known. 
That Life is ever lord of Death, jio 

And Love can never lose its own! 

We sped the time with stories old. 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 
Or stammered from our school-l)ook 

lore 
" TheChief of Gambia's golden shore." 
How often since, when all the land 
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand. 



492 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



As if a far-blown trumpet stirred 
The languorous sin-sick air, I heard: 
''Does not the voice of reason cry, 220 

Claim the first right which Nature gave, 
From the red scourge of bondage fly, 

Nor deign to live a burdened slave!" 
Our father rode again his ride 
On Memphremagog's wooded side; 
Sat down again to moose and samp 
In trapper's hut and Indian camp; 
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
Beneath St. Francois' hemlock-trees; 
Again for him the moonlight shone 230 
On Norman cap and bodiced zone; 
Again he heard the violin play 
Wiiicli led the village dance away, 
And mingled in its merry whirl 
The grandam and the laughing girl. 
Or, nearer home, our steps he led 
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread 

Mile-wide as flies the laden bee; 
Where merry mowers, hale and strong. 
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths 
along 240 

The low green prairies of the sea. 
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 

And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 

The hake-broil on the drift-wood 
coals ; 
The chowder on the sand-beach made. 
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot. 
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
We heard the tales of witchcraft old, 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
To sleepy listeners as they lay 250 
Stretched idly on the salted hay, 
Adrift along the winding shores. 
When favoring breezes deigned to blow 
The square sail of the gundelow 
And idle lay the useless oars. 

Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, 
Told how the Indian hordes came 

down 
At midnight on Cocheco town. 
And how her own great-uncle bore 260 
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways), 
The story of her early days, -^ 
She made us welcome to her home; 
Old hearths grew wide to give us 

room: 268 



We stole with her a frightened look 
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 
The fame whereof went far and wide 
Through all the simple country side; 
We heard the hawks at twilight 

play. 
The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 
The loon's weird laughter far away; 
We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
What flowers in wood and meadow 

grew, 
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts 

down, 
Saw where in sheltered cove and 

bay 280 

The ducks' black squadron anchored 

lay. 
And heard the wild-geese calling 

loud 
Beneath the gray November cloud. 
Then, haply, with a look more grave, 
And soberer tone, some tale she gave 
From painful Sewel 's ancient tome, 
Beloved in every Quaker home. 
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom. 
Or Chalkley's Journal, old and 

quaint, — 
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint ! — 
Who, when the dreary calms pre- 
vailed, 291 
And water-butt and bread-cask failed. 
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 
His portly presence, mad for food, 
With dark hints muttered under breath 
Of casting lots for life jr death. 
Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, 
To be himself the sacrifice. 
Then, suddenly, as if to save 
The good man from his living grave, 
A ripple on the water grew, 301 
A school of porpoise flashed in view. 
" Take, eat," he said, " and be content; 
These fishes in my stead are sent 
By Him who gave the tangled ram 
To spare the child of Abraham." 

Our uncle, innocent of books, 
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 
The ancient teachers never dumb 
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 310 
In moons and tides and weather 

wise. 
He read the clouds as prophecies, 
And foul or fair could well divine. 
By many an occult hint and sign. 



SNOW-BOUND 



493 




'■ lie lukl iiuw teal and loon lie shot, 
And how the eagle's eggs he got " 



Holding the cunning-warded keys 
To all the woodcraft mysteries; 
Himself to Nature's heart so near 
That all her voices in his ear 
Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 
Like Apollonius of old, 320 

Who knew the tales the sparrows 

told, 
Or Hermes, who interpreted 
What the sage cranes of Nilus said; 
A simple, guileless, childlike man, 
Qr>r.+ar,t fo ''^'o v'^^'^^e Hfc bcgau ; 
Stroi'L onjy '.n hu i.ative grounds, 

T '■' ' I oi .sights and sounds 

"V^ lis tie parish bounds, 

"V^ ' >artial pride 

T s magnified, 330 



As Surrey hills to mountains grew 
In White of Selborne's loving view, — 
He told how teal and loon he shot. 
And how the eagle's eggs he got, 
The feats on pond and river done, 
The prodigies of rod and gun; 
Till, warming with the tales ho told. 
Forgotten was the outside cold, 
The bitter wind unheeded blew, 
From ripening corn the pigeons flew, 
The partridge drummed i' the wood, 
the mink 341 

Went fishing down the river-brink. 
In fields with bean or clover gay, 
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,^ 
Peered from the doorway of his 
cell; 



494 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



The muskrat plied the mason's trade, 
And tier by tier his mud- walls laid; 
And from the shagbark overhead 
The grizzled squirrel dropped his 
shell. 

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of 
cheer 3 so 

And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate, 
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
Found peace in love's unselfishness, 
And welcome wheresoe'er she went, 
A calm and gracious element, 
Whose presence seemed the sweet in- 
come 
And womanly atmosphere of home, — 
Called up her girlhood memories, 360 
The huskings and the apple-bees, 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails. 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespun warp of circumstance 
A golden woof-thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhood; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay, 
The mirage loomed across her way; 
The morning dew, that dries so soon 370 
With others, glistened at her noon; 
Through years of toil and soil and care. 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 
The virgin fancies of the heart. 
Be shame to him of woman born 
Who hath for such but thought of 
scorn. 

There, too, our elder sister plied 
Her evening task the stand beside; 
A full, rich nature, free to trust, 380 
Truthful and almost sternly just, 
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 
And make her generous thought a fact. 
Keeping with many a light disguise 
The secret of self-sacrifice. 
O heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best 
That Heaven itself could give thee, — 

rest, 
Rest from all bitter thoughts and 

things ! 
How many a poor one's blessing 

went 
With thee beneath the low green 

tent 390 

Whose curtain never outward swings ! 



As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean. 
Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat. 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 

Now bathed in the unfading green 
And lioly peace of Paradise. 399 

Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, 

Or from the shade of saintly palms, 

Or silver reach of river calms, 
Do those large eyes behold me still ? 
With me one little year ago : — 
The chill weight of the winter snow 

For months upon her grave has 
lain; 
And now, when summer south-winds 
blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 
I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
I see the violet-sprinkled sod 410 

Whereon she leaned, too frail and 

weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
The birds are glad; the brier-rose 

fills 
The air with sweetness; all the hills 
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; 
But still I wait with ear and eye 
For something gone which should be 

nigh, 
A loss in all familiar things, 420 

In flower that blooms, and bird that 

sings. 
And yet, dear heart! remembering 
thee, 

Am I not richer than of old ? 
Safe in thy immortality. 

What change can reach the wealth 
I hold? 

What chance can mar the pearl and 
gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
And while in life's late afternoon. 

Where cool and long the shadows 
grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 430 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far. 
Since near at need the angels are; 
And when the sunset gates unbar. 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star, 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 



SNOW-BOUND 



495 



Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 
The master of the district school 
Held at the fire his favored place, 440 
Its warm glow lit a laughing face 
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce ap- 
peared 
The uncertain prophecy of beard. 
He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 
Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 
Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 
Born the wild Northern hills among. 
From whence his yeoman father 

wrung 
By patient toil subsistence scant, 450 
Not competence and yet not want, 
He early gained the power to pay 
His cheerful, self-reliant way; 
Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 
To peddle wares from town to town; 
Or through the long vacation's reach 
In lonely lowland districts teach. 
Where all the droll experience found 
At stranger hearths in boarding round. 
The moonlit skater's keen delight, 460 
The sleigh-drive through the frosty 

night. 
The rustic party, with its rough 
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff. 
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid. 
His winter task a pastime made. 
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 
He tuned his merry violin, 
Or played the athlete in the barn, 
Or held the good dame's winding-yarn, 
Or mirth-provoking versions told 470 
Of classic legends rare and old. 
Wherein the scenes of Greece and 

Rome 
Had all the commonplace of home, 
And little seemed at best the odds 
'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods; 
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took 
The guise of any grist-mill brook, 
And dread Olympus at his will 
Became a huckleberry hill. 

A careless boy that night he seemed; 
But at his desk he had the look 481 
And air of one who wisely schemed. 
And hostage from the future took 
In trained thought and lore of 
book. 
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as 

he 
Shall Freedom's young apostles be, 



Who, following in War's bloody trail, 
Shall every lingering wrong a^ssail; 
All chains from limb and spirit strike, 
Uplift the black and white alike; 4yo 
Scatter before their swift advance 
The darkness and the ignorance, 
The pride, the lust, tlie squalid sloth, 
Which nurtured Treason's monstrous 

growtii. 
Made inurder pastime, and the hell 
Of prison-torture possible; 
The cruel lie of caste refute, 
Old forms remould, and substitute 
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will. 
For blind routine, wise-handed .skill; 
A school-house plant on every hill, soi 
Stretching in radiate nerve -lines 

thence 
The quick wires of intelligence; 
Till Nortli and South together brought 
Shall own the same electric thought. 
In peace a connnon flag salute. 
And, side by sid(^ in labor's free 
And unresentful rivalry. 
Harvest the fields wherein they 

fought. 

Another guest that winter night sio 
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the 

light. 
Unmarked by time, and yet not 

young. 
The honeyed nuisic of her tongue 
And words of meekness scarcely told 
A nature pjissionate and l)ol(l, 
Strong, self-conccntred,spurningguitle, 
Its milder features dwarfed beside 
Her unbent will's majestic pride. 
She sat among us, at the best, 
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, 
Rebuking with her cultured piirase sji 
Our homeliness of words and ways. 
A certain pard-like. treacherous grace 
Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped 

the lasli, 
Lent the white teeth their dazzling 

flash; 
And under low lirows, black with 

night, 
Rayed out at times a dangerous light; 
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 
Presiiging ill to him whom Fate 
('ondemned to share her love or hate. 
A woman tropical, intense S3i 

In thought and act, in soul and 

sense. 



496 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



She blended in a like degree 
The vixen and the devotee, 
Revealing with each freak or feint 
The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 
The raptures of Siena's saint. 
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 
Had facile power to form a fist; 539 
The warm, dark languish of her eyes 
Was never safe from wrath's surprise. 
Brows saintly calm and lips devout 
Knew every change of scowl and pout ; 
And the sweet voice had notes more 

high 
And shrill for social battle-cry. 

Since then what old cathedral town 
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 
What convent-gate has held its lock 
Against the challenge of her knock ! 
Through Smyrna's plague-hushed 

thoroughfares, ss© 

Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs. 
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 
Or startling on her desert throne 
The crazy Queen of Lebanon 
With claims fantastic as her own, 
Her tireless feet have held their way; 
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray. 
She watches under Eastern skies. 
With hope each day renewed and 

fresh, 560 

The Lord's quick coming in the 

flesh. 
Whereof she dreams and prophesies ! 

Where'er her troubled path may be. 
The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! 

The outward wayward life we see. 
The hidden springs we may not 
know. 

Nor is it given us to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun. 
Through what ancestral years has 
run 

The sorrow with the woman born, 570 

What forged her cruel chain of moods, 

What set her feet in solitudes. 

And held the love wdthin her mute, 

What mingled madness in the blood, 
A life-long discord and annoy, 
Water of tears with oil of joy. 

And hid within the folded bud 
Perversities of flower and fruit. 

It is riot ours to separate 

The tangled skein of will and fate, 



To show what metes and bounds 
should stand sSi 

Upon the soul's debatable land. 
And between choice and Providence 
Divide the circle of events; 
But He who knows our frame is just. 
Merciful and compassionate. 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is. 
That He remembereth we are dust ! 

At last the great logs, crumbling low, 
Sent out a dull and duller glow, 59 1 
The bull's-eye watch that hung in 

view, 
Ticking its weary circuit through. 
Pointed with mutely warning sign 
Its black hand to the hour of nine. 
That sign the pleasant circle broke: 
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, 
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray 
And laid it tenderly away; 
Then roused himself to safely cover 600 
The dull red brands with ashes over. 
And while, with care, our mother laid 
The work aside, her steps she stayed 
One moment, seeking to express 
Her grateful sense of happiness 
For food and shelter, warmth and 

health. 
And love's contentment more than 

wealth, 
With simple wishes (not the weak. 
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek. 
But such as warm the generous heart, 
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its 

part) 611 

That none might lack, that bitter 

night, 
For bread and clothing, warmth and 

light. 

Within our beds awhile we heard 
The wind that round the gables roared. 
With now and then a ruder shock. 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards 

tost. 
The board-nails snapping in the frost; 
And on us, through the unplastered 

wall, 620 

Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. 
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new; 
Faint and more ^-.r" " nurs 

grew, 



SNOW-BOUND 




" The wise old doctor went liis round " 



Till in the summer-land of dreams 
They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 



Next 



wakened with the 



morn we 
shout 
Of merry voices high and clear; 630 
And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To break the drifted highways out. 
Down the long hillside treading slow 
We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
Their straining nostrils white with 

frost. 
Before our door the straggling train 
D •, .i'i ^' ' o gain. 

T j,ndsa-cold, 



Passed, with the cider-mug, their 
jokes ''40 

From lip to lip; the younger folks 
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling 

rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 
O'er windy hill, through clogged ra- 
vine. 
And woodland paths that wound 
between 
Low drooping pine-boughs winter- 
weighed. 
From every barn a team afoot, 
At every hou.se a new recruit, 
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest 

law. 
Haply the watchful young men 
saw 650 



498 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
And curious eyes of merry girls, 
Lifting their hands in mock defence 
Against the snow-ball's compliments, 
And reading in each missive tost 
The charm with Eden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' 
sound; 

And, following where the teamsters 
led. 
The wise old Doctor went his round, 
Just pausing at our door to say, 660 
In the brief autocratic way 
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call 
Was free to urge her claim on all, 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
At night our mother's aid would need. 
For, one in generous thought and deed 

What mattered in the sufferer's sight 

The Quaker matron's inward light. 
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
All hearts confess the saints elect 670 

Who, twain in faith, in love agree. 
And melt not in an acid sect 

The Christian pearl of charity ! 

vSo days went on: a week had passed 
Since the great world was heard from 

last. 
The Almanac we studied o'er, 
Read and reread our little store 
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a 

score; 
One harmless novel, mostly hid 
From younger eyes, a book forbid, 680 
And poetry (or good or bad, 
A single book was all we had), 
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted 
Muse, 
A stranger to the heathen Nine, 
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine. 
The wars of David and the Jews. 
At last the floundering carrier bore 
The village paper to our door. 
Lo ! broadening outward as we read. 
To warmer zones the horizon spread ; 
III panoramic length unrolled 691 

We saw the marvels that it told. 
Before us passed the painted Creeks, 
And daft McGregor on his raids 
In Costa Rica's everglades. 
And up Taygetos winding slow 
Bode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow ! 
Welcome to us its week-old news, 



Its corner for the rustic Muse, 700 

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, 
Its record, mingling in a breath 
The wedding bell and dirge of death: 
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 
The latest culprit sent to jail; 
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost, 
And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street, 
The pulse of life that round us beat; 
The chill embargo of the snow 711 
Was melted in the genial glow; 
Wide swung again our ice-locked door. 
And all the world was ours once more ! 

Clasp, Angel of the backward look 
And folded wings of ashen gray 
And voice of echoes far away, 
The brazen covers of thy book; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast, 
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; 
Where, closely mingling, pale and 
glow 721 

The chalracters of joy and woe; 
The monographs of outlived years. 
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears. 

Green hills of life that slope to death, 
And haunts of home, whose vistaed 

trees 
Shade off to mournful cypresses, 
With the white amaranths under- 
neath. 
Even while I look, I can but heed 

The restless sands' incessant fall, 730 
Importunate hours that hours succeed 
Each clamorous with its own sharp 
need, 
And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; 
I hear again the voice that bids 
The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears: 
Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day ! 

Yet, haply, in some lull of life, 740 
Some Truce of God which breaks its 

strife. 
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 

Dreaming in throngful city ways 
Of winter joys his boyhood knew; 
And dear and early friends — the few 
Who yet remain — shall pause to view 

These Flemish pictures of old days; 
Sit with me by the homestead hearth 



IN SCHOOL-DAYS 



499 



And stretch the hands of memory fortli 
To warm them at the wood-fire's 
blaze! 750 

And thanks untraced to Hps unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown, 
Or lilies floating in some pond, 
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze be- 
yond; 
The traveller owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not 

whence, 
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air. 

MY TRIUMPH 

The autumn-time has, come; 
On woods that dream/ of bloom, 
And over purpling vines. 
The low sun fainter /shines. 

! 
The aster-flower is failing. 
The hazel's gold is paling; 
Yet overhead mor'3 near 
The eternal stars Appear ! 

And present gratitude 

Insures the future's: good, 10 

And for the things I see 

I trust the things lo be; 

That in the paths untrod. 
And the long days of God, 
My feet shall still he led, 
My heart be ccinforted. 

O living friends who love me ! 

dear ones gone above me ! 
Carel€ss/^of other fame, 

1 leave %o you my name. 20 

! 

Hide '1)0 from idle praises. 
Save it from evil phrases: 
Why/, when dear lips that spake it 
Are /lumb, should strangers wake it? 

Let/the thick curtain fall; 
I t/etter know than all 
How little I have gained, 
Ho\v vast the unattained. 

Not by the page word-painted 
Let \life be banned or sainted : 
Deer>>er than written scroll 
Thelcolors of the soul. 



30 



40 



Sweeter than any sung 

My songs tliat found no tongue; 

Noljler than any fact 

My wish that failed of act. 

Others shall sing the song. 
Others shall right the wrong, — 
Finish what I begin. 
And all I fail of win. 

What matter, I or they ? 
Mine or another's day. 
So the right word be said 
And life the sweeter made ? 

Hail to the coming singers! 
Hail to the brave Hght-l)ringers! 
Forward I reach and share 
All that they sing and dare. 



The airs of heaven blow o'er me; 
A glory shines before me so 

Of what mankind sliall l)e, — 
Pure, generous, brave, and free. 

A dream of man and woman 
Diviner but still human. 
Solving the riddle old, 
Shaping the Age of Gold ! 

The love of God and neighbor; 
An equal-handed labor; 
The richer life, where beauty 
Walks hand in hand with duty. 60 

Ring, bells in unreared steeples. 
The joy of unborn peoples! 
Sound, trumpets far on blown. 
Your triumph is my own ! 

Parcel and part of all, 
I keep the festival, 
Fore-rcacli tlie good to be. 
And share the victory. 

I feel the earth move sunward. 
I join the great marcli onward, 70 
And take, by faith, while living, 
My freehold of thanksgiving. 

IN SCHOOI^DAYS 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 

A ragged beggar sleeping; 
Around it still the sumachs grow, 

And blackberry-vines are creepmg. 



\ 



500 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 




" I 'm sorry that I spelt the word ; 
I hate to go above you ' ' 



Within, the master's desk is seen, 
Deep scarred by raps official; 

The warping floor, the battered seats. 
The jack-knife's carved initial; 

The charcoal frescoes on its wall; 

Its door's worn sill, betraying 
The feet that, creeping slow to school, 

Went storming out to playing ! 

Long years ago a winter sun 

Shone over it at setting; 
Lit up its western window-panes, 

And low eaves' icy fretting. 

It touclied the tangled golden curls, 
And brown eyes full of grieving, 



Of one who still her steps delayed 
When all the school vvere leav- 
ing. 

For near her stood the little 'wy 
Her childish favor singled: 

His cap pulled low upon a faci 

Where pride and shame we-e min- 
gled. 

Pushing with restless feet the siow 
To right and left, he lingered; — 

As restlessly her tiny hands 

The blue-checked apron fing3red. 

He saw her lift her eyes; he f'lt 
The soft hand's light caresshg, 



RED RIDING-HOOD 



501 



And heard the tremble of her voice, 
As if a fault confessing. 

''I'm sorry that I spelt tlie word: 

I hate to go above you, 
Because," — the brown eyes lower 
fell, — 

" Because, you see, I love you ! " 

Still memory to a gray-haired man 
That sweet child-face is showing. 

Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 
Have forty years been growing ! 

He lives to learn, in life's hard school. 
How few who pass above him 

Lament their triumph and his loss, 
Like her, — because they love him. 



MY BIRTHDAY 

Beneath the moonlight and the snow 

Lies dead my latest year; 
The winter winds are wailing low 

Its dirges in my ear. 

I grieve not with the moaning wind 

As if a loss befell; 
Before me, even as behind, 

God is, and all is well ! 

His light shines on me from above. 
His low voice speaks within, — 10 

The patience of immortal love 
Outwearying mortal sin. 

Not mindless of the growing years 
Of care and loss and pain. 

My eyes are wet with thankful tears 
For blessings which remain. 

If dim the gold of life has grown, 

I will not count it dross. 
Nor turn from treasures still my own 

To sigh for lack and loss. 20 

The years no charm fromNature take; 

As sweet her voices call. 
As beautiful her mornings break, 

As fair her evenings fall. 

Love watches o'er my quiet ways. 
Kind voices speak mv name. 

And lips that find it liard to praise 
Are slow, at least, to blame. 



How softly ebb the tides of will ! 

How fields, once lost or won, 30 
Now lie behind me green and still 

Beneath a level sun ! 

How hushed the hiss of party hate, 
The clamor of the throng ! 

How old, harsh voices of debate 
Flow into rhythmic song ! 

Methinks the spirit's temper grows 

Too soft in this still air; 
Somewhat the restful heart foregoes 

Of needed watch and prayer. 40 

The bark by tempest vainly tossed 

May founder in the calm. 
And he who braved the polar frost 

Faint by the isles of balm. 

Better than self-indulgent years 
The outflung heart of youth, 

Than pleasant songs in idle ears 
The tumult of the truth. 

Rest for the weary hands is good. 
And love for hearts that pine, so 

But let the manly habitude 
Of upright souls be mine. 

Let winds that blow from heaven re- 
fresh. 

Dear Lord, the languid air; 
And let the weakness of the flesh 

Thy strength of spirit share. 

And, if the eye must fail of light, 

The ear forget to hear, 
Make clearer still the spirit's sight. 

More fine the inward ear ! 60 

Be near me in mine hours of need 
To soothe, or cheer, or warn. 

And down tlieso slopes of sunset lead 
As up the hills of morn 1 



RED RIDING-HOOD 

On the wide lawn the .snow lay deep, 
Ridged o'er with many a drifted 

heap; 
The wind that through the pine-trees 

sung 
The naked elm-boughs tossed and 

swung; 



502 



POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



Wliile, through the window, frosty- 
starred, 
Against the sunset purple barred, 
We saw the sombre crow flap by. 
The hawk's gray fleck along the sky, 
The crested blue- jay flitting swift, 
The squirrel poising on the drift, lo 
Erect, alert, his broad gray tail 
Set to the north wind Hke a sail. 

It came to pass, our little lass. 
With flattened face against the glass, 
And eyes in which the tender dew 
Of pity shone, stood gazing through 
The narrow space her rosy lips 
Had melted from the frost's eclipse: 
"Oh, see," she cried, "the poor blue- 
jays ! 
What is it that the black crow says ? 20 
The squirrel lifts his little legs 
Because he has no hands, and begs; 
He's asking for my nuts, I know: 
May I not feed them on the snow?" 

Half lost within her boots, her head 
Warm-sheltered in her hood of red, 
Her plaid skirt close about her drawn, 
She floundered down the wintry lawn ; 
Now struggling through the misty veil 
Blown round her by the shrieking 
gale; 30 

Now sinking in a drift so low 
Her scarlet hood could scarcely show 
Its dash of color on the snow. 

She dropped for bird and beast for- 
lorn 
Her little store of nuts and corn. 
And thus her timid guests bespoke: 
"Come, squirrel, from your hollow 

oak, — 
Come, black old crow, — come, poor 

blue- jay. 
Before your supper's blown away ! 
Don't be afraid, we all are good; 40 
And I'm mamma's Red Riding- 
Hood!" 

O Thou whose care is over all. 
Who heedest even the sparrow's fall. 
Keep in the little maiden's breast 
The pity whicli is now its guest ! 
Let not her cultured years make less 
The childhood charm of tenderness, 
But let her feel as well as know. 
Nor harder with her polish grow ! 



Unmoved by sentimental grief 50 

That wails along some printed leaf, 
But prompt with kindly word and 

deed 
To own the claims of all who need. 
Let the grown woman's self make 

good 
The promise of Red Riding-Hood ! 



RESPONSE 

1877 

Beside that milestone where the level 

sun. 
Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, 

low rays 
On word and work irrevocably done. 
Life's blending threads of good and ill 

outspun, 
I hear, O friends ! your words of 

cheer and praise. 
Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. 
Like him, who, in the old Arabian 

joke, 
A beggar slept and crowned Caliph 

woke. 
Thanks not the less. With not unglad 

surprise 
I see my life-work through your par- 
tial eyes; 
Assured, in giving to my home-taught 

songs 
A higher value than of right belongs. 
You do but read between the written 

lines 
The finer grace of unfulfilled designs. 

AT EVENTIDE 

Poor and inadequate the shadow-play 
Of gain and loss, of waking and of 

dream. 
Against life's solemn background 

needs must seem 
At this late hour. Yet, not unthank- 

fully, 
I call to mind the fountains by the 

way. 
The breath of flowers, the bird-song on 

the spray, 
Dear friends, sweet human loves, the 

joy of giving 
And of receiving, the great boon of 
living 



VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE 



5^3 



In grand historic years when Lib- 
erty 

Had need of word and work, quick 
sympathies 

For all who fail and suffer, song's re- 
lief, 

Nature's uncloying loveliness; and 
chief. 
The kind restraining hand of Provi- 
dence, 
The inward witness, the assuring 
sense 

Of an Eternal Good which overlies 

The sorrow of the world, Love which 
outlives 

All sin and wrong, Compassion which 
forgives 

To the uttermost, and Justice whose 
clear eyes 

Through lapse and failure look to the 
intent, 

And judge our frailty by the life we 
meant. 



VOYAGE OF THE JETTIE 

A SHALLOW stream, from fountains 
Deep in the Sandwich mountains. 

Ran lakeward Bearcamp River; 
And between its flood-torn shores, 
Sped by sail or urged by oars, 

No keel had vexed it ever. 

Alone the dead trees yielding 
To the dull axe Time is wielding, 

The shy mink and the otter, 
And golden leaves and red, lo 

By countless autumns shed, 

Had floated down its water. 

From the gray rocks of Cape Ann, 
Came a skilled seafaring man. 

With his dory, to the right place; 
Over hill and plain he brought her. 
Where the boatless Bearcamp water 

Comes winding down from White- 
Face. 

Quoth the skipper: "Ere she floats 

forth, 
I'm sure my pretty boat's worth, 20 

At least, a name as pretty.'' 
On her painted side he wrote it, 
And the flag that o'er her floated 

Bore aloft the name of Jettie. 



On a radiant morn of summer, 
Elder guest and latest comer 

Saw her wed the Bearcamp water; 
Heard the name the skipper gave 

her. 
And the answer to the favor 

From the Bay State's graceful 
daughter. 30 

Then a singer, richly gifted, 
Her cliarmed voice uplifted; 

And the wood-thrush and song- 
sparrow 
Listened, dumb with envious pain. 
To the clear and sweet refrain 

Whose notes they could not bor- 
row. 

Then the skipper plied his oar. 
And from off the shelving shore, 

Glided out the strange explorer; 
Floating on, she knew not whither, — 
The tawny sands beneath hor, 41 

The great hills watching o'er her. 

On, where the stream flows quiet 
As the meadows' margin by it, 

Or widens out to borrow a 
New life from that wild water. 
The mountain giant's daughter. 

The pine-besung Chocorua. 

Or, mid the tangling cumloer 

And pack of mountain lumber 50 

That spring floods downward force. 
Over sunken snag, and l)ar 
Where the grating shallows are. 

The good boat held her course. 

Under the pine-dark highlands, 
Around the vine-hung islands. 

She ploughed her crooked furrow; 
And her rippling and her lurches 
Scared the river eels antl perches, 

And the musk-rat in his burrow. 60 

Every sober clam below her. 
Every sage and grave poarl-growor, 

Shut liis rusty valves the tighter; 
Crow called to crow complaining, 
And old tortoises sat craning 

Their leathern necks to sight her. 

So, to where the still lake ghisses 
The misty mountain masses 

Rising dim and distant northward. 



504 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



.\nd, with faint-drawn shadow pic- 
tures, 70 

Low shores, and dead pine spectres, 
Blends the skyward and the earth- 
ward, 

On she gUded, overladen, 
With nierrv man and maiden 

Sending "back their song and laugh- 
ter, — 
While, perchance, a phantom crew, 
In a ghostly birch canoe. 

Paddled dumb and swiftly after ! 

And the bear on Ossipee 

Climbed the topmost crag to see 80 

The strange thing drifting under; 
And, through the haze of August, 
Passaconaway and Paugus 

Looked down in sleepy wonder. 

All the pines that o'er her hung 
In mimic sea-tones sung 

The song familiar to her; 
And the maples leaned to screen her. 
And the meadow-grass seemed greener 

And the breeze more soft to woo 
her. 90 

The lone stream mystery-haunted 
To her the freedom granted 

To scan its every feature. 
Till new and old were blended, 
And round them both extended 

The loving arms of Nature. 

Of these hills the little vessel 
Henceforth is part and parcel; 

And on Bearcamp shall her log 
Be kept, as if by Georges 100 

Or Grand Menan the surges 

Tossed her skipper through the fog. 

And I, who, half in sadness, 
Recall the morning gladness 

Of life, at evening time. 
By chance, onlooking idly, 
Apart from all so widely, 

Have set her voyage to rhyme 

Dies now the gay persistence 

Of song and laugli, in distance; no 

Alone with me remaining 
The stream, the quiet meadow, 
The hills in shine and shadow, 

The sombre pines complaining. 



And, musing here, I dream 
Of voyagers on a stream 

From whence is no returning. 
Under sealed orders going. 
Looking forward little knowing. 

Looking back with idle yearning. 120 

And I pray that every venture 
The port of peace may enter, 

That, safe from snag and fall 
And siren-haunted islet. 
And rock, the Unseen Pilot 

May guide us one and all. 

MY TRUST 

A PICTURE memory brings to me: 
I look across the years and see 
Myself beside my mother's knee. 

I feel her gentle hand restrain 
My selfish moods, and know again 
A child's blind sense of wrong and pain. 

But wiser now, a man gray grown. 
My childhood's needs are better known, 
My mother's chastening love I own. 

Gray grown, but in our Father's sight 
A child still groping for the light 
To read His works and ways aright. 

I wait, in His good time to see 
That as my mother dealt with me 
So with His children dealeth He. 

I bow myself beneath His hand: 
That pain itself was wisely planned 
I feel, and partly understand. 

The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, 
The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, 
I would not have them otherwise. 

And w^hat were life and death if sin 
Knew not the dread rebuke within. 
The pang of merciful discipline ? 

Not with thy proud despair of old. 
Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest 

mould ! 
Pleasure and pain alike I hold. 

I suffer with no vain pretence 
Of triumph over flesh and sense, 
Yet trust the grievous providence, 



A NAME 



505 




St. Malo 



How dark soe'er it seems, may tend, 
By ways I cannot comprehend, 
To some unguessed benignant end; 

That every loss and lapse may gain 
The clear-aired heights by steps of 

pain, 
And never cross is borne in vain. 



A NAME 

TO G. W. P. 

The name the GalHc exile bore, 
St. Malo ! from thy ancient mart, 

Became upon our Western shore 
Greenleaf for Fcuillevert. 



5o6 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



A name to hear in soft accord 
Of leaves by light winds overrun, 

Or read, upon the greening sward 
Of May, in shade and sun. 

The name my infant ear first heard 
Breathed softly with a mother's 
kiss; lo 

His mother's own, no tenderer word 
My father spake than this. 

No child have I to bear it on; 

Be thou its keeper; let it take 
From gifts well used and duty done 

New beauty for thy sake. 

The fair ideals that outran 

My halting footsteps seek and find — 
The flawless symmetry of man. 

The poise of heart and mind. 20 

Stand firmly where I felt the sway 
Of every wing that fancy flew. 

See clearly where I groped my way, 
Nor real from seeming knew. 

And wisely choose, and bravely hold 
Thy faith unswerved by cross or 
crown, 

Like the stout Huguenot of old 
Whose name to thee comes down. 

As Marot's songs made glad the 
heart 

Of that lone exile, haply mine 30 
May in life's heavy hours impart 

Some strength and hope to thine. 

Yet when did Age transfer to Youth 
The hard-gained lessons of its day ? 

Each lip must learn the taste of 
truth, 
Each foot must feel its way. 

We cannot hold the hands of choice 
That touch or shun life's fateful 
keys; 

The whisper of the inward voice 
Is more than homilies. 40 

Dear boy ! for whom the flowers are 
born. 
Stars shine, and happy song-birds 

--,, sing. 

VVhat can my evening give to morn, 
My winter to thy spring ! 



A life not void of pure intent, 

With small desert of praise or blame, 

The love I felt, the good I meant, 
I leave thee with my name. 



GREETING 

I SPREAD a scanty board too late; 
The old-time guests for whom I wait 

Come few and slow, methinks, to- 
day. 
Ah ! who could hear my messages 
Across the dim unsounded seas 

On which so many have sailed away! 

Come, then, old friends, who linger 

yet, 

And let us meet, as we have met, 
Once more beneath this low sun- 
shine ; 
And grateful for the good we've 

known, 
The riddles solved, the ills outgrown, 
Shake hands upon the border line. 

The favor, asked too oft before, 
From your indulgent ears, once more 

I crave, and, if belated lays 
To slower, feebler measures move, 
The silent sympathy of love 

To me is dearer now than praise. 

And ye, O younger friends, for whom 

My hearth and heart keep open room, 

Come smiling through the shadows 

Be with me while the sun goes down. 
And with your cheerful voices drown 
The minor of my even-song. 

For, equal through the day and night, 
The wise Eternal oversight 

And love and power and righteous 
will 
Remain: the law of destiny 
The best for each and all must be, 

And life its promise shall fulfil. 



AN AUTOGRAPH 

I WRITE my name as one, 
On sands by waves o'errun 
Or winter's frosted pane, 
Traces a record vain. 



ABRAM MORRISON 



507 



Oblivion's blankness claims 
Wiser and better names, 
And well my own may pass 
As from the strand or glass. 

Wash on, O waves of time ! 
Melt, noons, the frosty rime ! i 
Welcome the shadow vast. 
The silence that shall last ! 

When I and all who know 
And love me vanish so. 
What harm to them or me 
Will the lost memory be ? 

If any words of mine. 
Through right of life divine, 
Remain, what matters it 
Whose hand the message writ ? 2( 

Why should the "crowner's quest' 
Sit on my worst or best ? 
Why should the showman claim 
The poor ghost of my name ? 

Yet, as when dies a sound 
Its spectre lingers round, 
Haply my spent life will 
Leave some faint echo still. 

A whisper giving breath 

Of praise or blame to death, 3« 

Soothing or saddening such 

As loved the living much. 

Therefore with yearnings vain 
And fond I still would fain 
A kindly judgment seek, 
A tender thought bespeak. 

And, while my words are read, 
Let this at least be said: 
" Whate'er his life's defeatures, 
He loved his fellow-creatures. 4c 

" If, of the Law's stone table, 
To hold he scarce was able 
The first great precept fast. 
He kept for man the last. 

"Through mortal lapse and dul- 

ness 
What lacks the Eternal Fulness, 
If still our weakness can 
Love Him in loving man ? 



" Age brought him no despairing 
Of the world's future faring; so 

In human nature still 
He found more good than ill. 

" To all who dumbly suffered, 
His tongue and pen he offered; 
His life was not his own, 
Nor lived for self alone. 

" Hater of din and riot 

He lived in days unquiet; 

And, lover of all beauty, 

Trod the hard ways of duty. 60 

'■ He meant no wrong to any, 
He sought the good of many, 
Yet knew both sin and folly, — • 
May God forgive him wholly 1" 



ABRAM MORRISON 

'Midst the men and things which will 
Haunt an old man's memory still, 
Drollest, quaintest of them all, 
With a boy's laugh I recall 

Good old Abram Morrison. 

When the Grist and Rolling Mill 
Ground and rumbled by Po Hill, 
And the old red school-house stood 
Midway in the Powow's flood, 

Here dwelt Abram Morrison. 10 

From the Beach to far beyond 
Bear-Hill, Lion's Mouth and Pond, 
Marvellous to our tough old stock, 
Chips o' the Anglo-Saxon block. 
Seemed the Celtic Morrison. 

Mudknock, Balmawhistle, all 
Only knew the Yankee drawl, 
Never brogue was heard till when, 
Foremost of his countrymen, 

Hither came Friend Morrison; ao 

Yankee born, of alien blood, 
Kin of his had well withstood 
Pope and King with pike and ball 
Under Derry's Icaguerod wall. 
As became the Morrisons. 

Wandering down from Niitfield woods 
With his household and his goods. 



5o8 POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT 



Never was it clearly told 
How within our quiet fold 

Came to be a Morrison. 30 

Once a soldier, blame him not 
That the Quaker he forgot, 
When, to think of battles \von, 
And the red-coats on the run, 

Laughed aloud Friend Morri- 
son. 

From gray Lewis over sea 
Bore his sires their family tree, 
On the rugged boughs of it 
Grafting Irish mirth and wit, 

And the brogue of Morrison. 40 

Half a genius, quick to plan, 
Blundering like an Irishman, 
But with canny shrewdness lent 
By his far-off Scotch descent, 
Such was Abram Morrison. 

Back and forth to daily meals. 
Rode his cherished pig on wheels, 
And to all who came to see, 
" Aisier for the pig an' me. 

Sure it is," said Morrison. 50 

Simple-hearted, boy o'ergrown, 
With a hvnnor quite his own. 
Of our sober-stepping ways. 
Speech and look and cautious phrase. 
Slow to learn was Morrison. 

Much we loved his stories told 
Of a country strange and old. 
Where the fairies danced till dawn. 
And the goblin Leprecaun 

Looked, we thought, like Morri- 
son. 60 

Or wild tales of feud and fight, 
Witch and troll and second sight 
Whispered still where Stornoway 
Looks across its stormy bay. 

Once the home of Morrisons. 

First was he to sing the praise 
Of the Po wow's winding w^avs; 
And our straggling village took 
City gra,ndeur to the look 

Of its poet Morrison. 70 

All his words have perished. Shame 
On the saddle-bags of Fame, 



That they bring not to our time 
One poor couplet of the rhyme 
Made by Abram Morrison ! 

When, on calm and fair First Days, 
Rattled do\vn our one-horse chaise. 
Through the blossomed apple-boughs 
To the old brown meeting-house, 

There was Abram Morrison. 80 

Underneath his hat's broad brim 
Peered the queer old face of him; 
And with Irish jauntiness 
Swung the coat-tails of the dress 
Worn by Abram Morrison. 

Still, in memory, on his feet, 
Leaning o'er the elders' seat. 
Mingling wdth a solemn drone, 
Celtic accents all his own. 

Rises Abram Morrison. 90 

''Don't," he's pleading, "don't ye 

go, 
Dear young friends, to sight and 

show; 
Don't run after elephants. 
Learned pigs and presidents 

And the likes!" said Morrison. 

On his well-worn theme intent, 
Simple, child-like, innocent, 
Heaven forgive the half-checked smile 
Of our careless boyhood, while 

Listening to Friend Morrison ! 100 

We have learned in latter days 
Truth may speak in simplest phrase; 
That the man is not the less 
For quaint ways and home-spun dress, 
Thanks to Abram Morrison ! 

Not to pander nor to please 
Come the needed homilies, 
With no lofty argument 
Is the fitting message sent, 

Through such lips as Morrison's. 

Dead and gone ! But while its track 1 1 1 
Powow keeps to Merrimac, 
While Po Hill is still on guard, 
Looking land and ocean ward. 
They shall tell of Morrison ! 

After half a century's lapse, 
We are wiser now, perhaps, 



A LEGACY 



509 



But we miss our streets amid 
Something which the past has hid, 
Lost with Abram Morrison. 

Gone forever with the queer 
Characters of that old year ! 
Now the many are as one; 
Broken is the mould that run 
Men like Abram Morrison. 



A LEGACY 

Friend of my many years ! 
When the great silence falls, at last, on 

me, 
Let me not leave, to pain and sadden 
thee, 
A memory of tears, 

But pleasant thoughts alone 
Of one who was thy friendship's hon- 
ored guest 



And drank the wine of consolation 
pressed 
From sorrows of thy own. 

I leave with thee a sense 
Of hands upheld and trials rendered 

less — 
The unselfish joy which is to helpful- 
ness 
Its own great recompense; 

The knowledge that from thine. 
As from the garments of the Mjister, 

stole 
Calmness and strength, the virtue 
which makes whole 
And heals without a sign; 

Yea more, the assurance strong 
That love, which fails of perfect utter- 
ance here. 
Lives on to fill the heavenly atmo- 
sphere 
With its immortal soQg. 




" And what am I, o'er sucli a land 
The banner of the Cross to bear ? " 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 

Where Time the measure of his hours 
By changeful bud and blossom 
keeps, 
And, like a young bride crowned with 
flowers. 
Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps; 

Where, to her poet's turban stone. 
The Spring her gift of flowers im- 
parts, 



Less sweet than those his thoughts 
have sown 
In the warm soil of Persian hearts: 

There sat the stranger, where the shade 
Of scattered date-trees thinly lay, lo 

While in the hot clear heaven delayed 
The long and still and weary day. 

Strange trees and fruits above him 
hung. 
Strange odors filled the sultry air, 



THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 



511 



Strange birds upon the branches swung, 
Strange insect voices murmured 
there. 

And strange bright blossoms shone 
around, 
Turned sunward from the shadowy 
bowers, 
As if the Gheber's soul had found 
A fitting home in Iran's flowers. 20 

Whate'er he saw, whate'er he heard, 
Awakened feelings new and sad, — 

No Christian garb, nor Christian word. 
Nor church with Sabbath-bell 
chimes glad, 

But Moslem graves, with turban 
stones. 
And mosque-spires gleaming white, 
in view. 
And graybeard Mollahs in low tones 
Chanting their Koran service 
through. 

The flowers which smiled on either 

hand, 

Like tempting fiends, were such as 

they 30 

Which once, o'er all that Eastern land. 

As gifts on demon altars lay. 

As if the burning eye of Baal 

The servant of his Conqueror knew. 

From skies which knew no cloudy veil, 
The Sun's hot glances smote him 
through. 

" Ah me ! " the lonely stranger said, 
"The hope which led my footsteps 
on. 
And light from heaven around them 
shed. 
O'er weary wave and waste, is gone ! 

"Where are the harvest fields all 

white, 41 

For Truth to thrust her sickle in ? 

Where flock the souls, hke doves in 

flight, . 

From the dark hiding-place of sm ? 

" A silent horror broods o'er all, — 
The burden of a hateful spell, — 

The very flowers around recall 
The hoary magi's rites of hell 1 



"And what am I, o'er sucli a land 
The banner of the Cross to bear ? 50 

Dear Lord, upliold me with Thy hand, 
Thy strength with human weakness 
share!" 

He ceased; for at his very feet 
In mild rebuke a floweret smiled; 

How thrilled his sinking heart to greet 
The Star-flowerof the Virgin's cliild! 

Sown by some wandering Frank, it 
drew 

Its life from alien air and earth, 
And told to Paynim sun and dew 

The story of the Saviour's birth. 60 

From scorching beams, in kindly mood, 
The Persian plants its beauty 
screened, 
And on its pagan sisterhood. 

In love, the Christian floweret 
leaned. 

With tears of joy the wanderer felt 
The darkness of his long despair 

Before that hallowed symbol melt. 
Which God's dear love had nur- 
tured there. 

From Nature's face, that simple flower 
The lines of sin and sadness swept; 70 

And Magian pile and Paynim bower 
In peace like that of Eden slept. 

Each Moslem tomb, and cypress old, 
Looked holy through the sunset air; 

And, angel-like, the Muezzin told 
From tower and mosque the hour of 
prayer. 

With cheerful steps, the morrow's 
dawn 

From Shiraz saw the stranger part; 
The Star-flower of the Virgin-l^oni t'j 

Still blooming in his hopeful heart 1 



THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN 

" Get ye up from the wrath of God's 
terrible day ! 

Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and 
awav ! 

'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the ful- 
ness of time. 



512 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



And vengeance shall gather the har- 
vest of crhne!" 

The warning was spoken — the riglit- 

eous had gone, 
And the proud ones of Sodom were 

feasting alone; 
All gay was the banquet — the revel 

was long, 
With the pouring of wine and the 

breathing of song. 

'T was an evening of beauty; the air 

was perfume, 
The earth was all greenness, the trees 

were all bloom; 
And softly the delicate viol was 

heard, 
Like the murmur of love or the notes 

of a bird. 

And beautiful maidens moved down in 
the dance. 

With the magic of motion and sun- 
shine of glance; 

And white arms wreathed lightly, and 
tresses fell free 

As the plumage of birds in some tropi- 
cal tree. 

Where the shrines of foul idols were 

lighted on high. 
And wantonness tempted the lust of 

the eye; 
Midst rites of obsceneness, strange, 

loathsome, abhorred. 
The blasphemer scoffed at the name 

of the Lord. 

Hark ! the growl of the thunder, — 

the quaking of earth ! 
Woe, woe to the worship, and woe to 

the mirth ! 
The black sky has opened; there's 

flame in the air; 
The red arm of vengeance is lifted and 

bare! 

Then the shriek of the dying rose wild 

where the song 
And the low tone of love had been 

whispered along; 
For the fierce flames went lightly o'er 

palace and bower. 
Like the red tongues of demons, to 

blast and devour 1 



Down, down on the fallen the red ruin 
rained. 

And the reveller sank with his wine- 
cup undrained; 

The foot of the dancer, the music's 
loved thrill. 

And the shout and the laughter grew 
suddenly still. 

The last throb of anguish was fearfully 
given; 

The last eye glared forth in its mad- 
ness on Heaven ! 

The last groan of horror rose wildly 
and vain. 

And death brooded over the pride of 
the Plain ! 

THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN 

Not always as the whirlwind's rush 

On Horeb's mount of fear. 
Not always as the burning bush 

To Midian's shepherd seer. 
Nor as the awful voice which came 

To Israel's prophet bards. 
Nor as the tongues of cloven flame, 

Nor gift of fearful words, — 

Not always thus, with outward sign 

Of fire or voice from Heaven, lo 
The message of a truth divine, 

The call of God is given ! 
Awaking in the human heart 

Love for the true and right, — 
Zeal for the Christian's better part. 

Strength for the Christian's fight. 

Nor unto manhood's heart alone 

The holy influence steals: 
Warm with a rapture not its own. 

The heart of woman feels ! 20 

As she who by Samaria's wall 

The Saviour's errand sought, — 
As those who with the fervent Paul 

And meek Aquila wrought : 

Or those meek ones whose martyrdom 

Rome's gathered grandeur saw: 
Or those who in their Alpine home 

Braved the Crusader's war. 
When the green Vaudois, trembling, 
heard, 

Through all its vales of death, 30 
The martyr's song of triumph poured 

From woman's failing breath. 



THE CRUCIFIXION 



513 




" A sacrifice for guilt is given ! " 



And gently, by a thousand things 

Which o'er our spirits pass, 
Like breezes o'er the harp's fine strings, 

Or vapors o'er a glass, 
Leaving their token strange and new 

Of music or of shade, 
The summons to the right and true 

And merciful is made. 40 

Oh, then, if gleams of truth and light 

Flash o'er thy waiting mind, 
Unfolding to thy mental sight 

The wants of human-kind; 
If, brooding over human grief, 

The earnest wish is known 
To soothe and gladden with relief 

An anguish not thine own; 



Though heralded with naught of 
fear. 

Or outward sign or show; so 

Though only to tlic inward ear 

It whispers soft and low; 
Though dropping, as the manna fell, 

Unseen, yet from above, 
Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well, — 

Thy Father's call of love ! 



THE CRUCIFIXION 

Sunlight upon Judrea's hills! 

And on the waves of Galilee; 
On Jordan's stream, and on the rills 

That feed the dead and sleeping sea ! 



514 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Most freshly from the green wood 

springs 
The light breeze on its scented wings; 
And gayly quiver in the sun 
Tlie cedar tops of Lebanon ! 

A few more hours, — a change hath 
come ! 

The sky is dark without a cloud ! lo 
The shouts of wrath and joy are dumb, 

And proud knees unto earth are 
bowed. 
A change is on the liill of Death, 
The helmed watchers pant for breath, 
And turn with wild and maniac eyes 
From the dark scene of sacrifice ! 

That Sacrifice ! — the death of Him,— 

The Christ of God, the holy One ! 
Well may the conscious Heaven grow 
dim. 
And blacken the beholding Sun. 20 
The wonted light hath fled away 
Night settles on the middle day, 
And earthquake from his caverned 

bed 
Is waking with a thrill of dread ! 

The dead are waking underneath ! 

Their prison door is rent away ! 
And, ghastly with the seal of death 

They wander in the eye of day ! 
The temple of the Cherubim, 
The House of God is cold and dim; 30 
A curse is on its trembling walls, 
Its mighty veil asunder falls ! 

Well may the cavern-depths of Earth 

Be shaken, and her mountains nod; 

Well may the sheeted dead come 

forth 

To see the suffering son of God ! 

Well may the temple-shrine grow 

dim. 
And shadows veil the Cherubim, 
When He, the chosen one of Heaven, 
A sacrifice for guilt is given ! 40 

And shall the sinful heart, alone. 

Behold unmoved the fearful hour. 
When Nature trembled on her throne, 
And Death resigned his iron power ? 
Oh, shall the heart — whose sinfulness 
Gave keenness to His sore distress. 
And added to His tears of blood — 
Refuse its trembling gratitude ? 



PALESTINE 

Blest land of Judaea ! thrice hallowed 
of song. 

Where the holiest of memories pil- 
grim-like throng; 

In the shade of thy palms, by the 
shores of thy sea. 

On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is 
with thee. 

With the eye of a spirit I look on that 
shore 

Where pilgrim and prophet have lin- 
gered before; 

With the glide of a spirit I traverse the 
sod 

Made bright by the steps of the angels 
of God. 

Blue sea of the hills ! in my spirit I 
hear 

Thy waters, Gennesaret, chime on my 
ear; 10 

Where the Lowly and Just with the 
people sat down. 

And thy spray on the dust of His san- 
dals was thrown. 

Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of 
green, 

And the desolate hills of the wild 
Gadarene ; 

And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabo 
to see 

The gleam of thy waters, O dark Gali- 
lee! 

Hark, a sound in the valley ! where, 
swollen and strong. 

Thy river, O Kishon, is sweeping 
along; 

Where the Canaanite strove with Je- 
hovah in vain. 

And thy torrent grew dark with the 
blood of the slain. 20 

There down from his mountains stern 
Zebulon came, 

And Naphthali's stag, with his eye- 
balls of flame, 

And the chariots of Jabin rolled harm- 
lessly on. 

For the arm of the Lord was Abino- 
am's son ! 



PALESTINE 



515 




Palestine 



There sleep the still rocks and the 

caverns which rang 
To the song which the beautiful 

prophetess sang, 
When the princes of Issachar stood by 

her side, 
And the shout of a host in its triumph 

replied. 

Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is 

seen, 
With the mountains around, and the 

valleys between; 30 

There rested the shepherds of Judah, 

and there 
The song of the angels rose sweet on 

the air. 

And Bethany's palm-trees in beauty 
still throw 

Their shadows at noon on the ruins 
below; 

But where are the sisters who has- 
tened to greet 

The lowlv Redeemer, and sit at His 
feet? 



I tread where the twelve in their way- 
faring trod; 

I stand where they stood with the 
chosen of God — 

Where His blessing was heard and His 
lessons were taught, 

Where the l^lind were restored and the 
healing was wrought. 40 

Oh, here with His flock the sad Wan- 
derer came; 

These hills He toiled over in grief are 
the same; 

The founts where He drank by the 
wayside still flow, 

And the same airs are blowing which 
breathed on His brow ! 

And throned on her hills sits Jerusa- 
lem yet, 

But with dust on her forehead, and 
chains on lier feet; 

For the crown of her pride to the 
mocker hath gone, 

And the lioly Sliechinah is dark where 
it shone. 



5i6 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Hut wherefore this dream of the 
earthly abode 

Of Humanity clotlied in the brightness 
of God ? so 

Were my spirit but turned from the 
outward and dim, 

It could gaze, even now, on the pre- 
sence of Him ! 

Not in clouds and in terrors, but gen- 
tle as when, 

In love and in meekness, He moved 
among men; 

And the voice which breathed peace to 
the waves of the sea 

In the hush of my spirit would whisper 
to me ! 

And what if my feet may not tread 
where He stood. 

Nor my ears hear the dashing of Gali- 
lee's flood. 

Nor my eyes see the cross which He 
bowed Him to bear, 

Nor my knees press Gethsemane's 
garden of prayer. 60 

Yet, Loved of the Father, Thy Spirit 
is near 

To the meek, and the lowly, and peni- 
tent here; 

And the voice of Thy love is the 
same even now 

As at Bethany's tomb or on Olivet's brow. 

Oh, the outward hath gone! but in 

glory and power. 
The spirit surviveth the things of an 

hour; 
Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost 

flame 
On the heart's secret altar is burning 

the same ! 

HYMNS 

FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE 



"Encore un hyinne, ma lyre! 
Un hyiniie pour le Seigneur, 
Un hynirn; dans nion dtMire, 
Un hynine dans men bonheur. 

One hymn more, O my lyre ! 
Praise to the God above, 
Of joy and life and love. 

Sweeping its strings of fire ! 



Oh, who the speed of bird and wind 

And sunbeam's glance will lend to 
me, 
That, soaring upward, I may find 

My resting-place and home in Thee ? 
Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and 
gloom, 

Adoreth with a fervent flame, — 10 
Mysterious spirit ! unto whom 

Pertains nor sign nor name ! 

Swiftly my lyre's soft murmurs go 

Up from the cold and joyless earth, 
Back to the God who bade them flow, 

Whose moving spirit sent them 
forth. 
But as for me, O God ! for me. 

The lowly creature of Thy will, 
Lingering and sad, I sigh to Thee, 

An earth-bound pilgrim still ! 20 

Was not my spirit born to shine 
Where yonder stars and suns are 
glowing ? 
To l:)reathe with them the light divine 
From God's own holy altar flow- 
ing? 
To be, indeed, whate'er the soul 
In dreams hath thirsted for so 
long, — 
A portion of heaven's glorious whole 
Of loveliness and song ? 

Oh, watchers of the stars at night, 
Who breathe their fire, as we the 
air, — 30 

Suns, thunders, stars, and rays of 
light, 
Oh, say, is He, the Eternal, there? 
Bend there around His awful throne 
The seraph's glance, the angel's 
knee? 
Or are thy inmost depths His own, 
O wild and mighty sea? 

Thoughts of my soul, how swift ye 
go! 
Swift as the eagle's glance of fire, 
Or arrows from the archer's bow. 

To the far aim of your desire ! 40 
Thought after thought, ye thronging 
rise. 
Like spring-doves from the startled 
wood. 
Bearing like them your sacrifice 
Of music unto God ! 



HYMNS 



517 



And shall these thoughts of joy and 
love 
Come back again no more to me ? 
Returning like the patriarch's dove 
Wing-weary from the eternal sea, 
To bear within my longing arms 
The promise-bough of kindlier 
skies, 50 

Plucked from the green, immortal 
palms 
Which shadow Paradise? 

All-moving spirit ! freely forth 

At Thy command the strong wind 
goes: 
Its errand to the passive earth, 

Nor art can stay, nor strength op- 
pose, 
Until it folds its weary wing 

Once more within the hand divine; 
So, weary from its wandering. 

My spirit turns to Thine ! 60 

Child of the sea, the mountain stream. 

From its dark caverns, hurries on, 
Ceaseless, by night and morning's 
beam. 

By evening's star and noontide's 
sun, 
Until at last it sinks to rest, 

O'erwearied, in the waiting sea. 
And moans upon its mother's breast, — 

So turns my soul to Thee ! 

O Thou who bidst the torrent flow. 

Who lendest wings unto the 

wind, — 70 

Mover of all things ! where art Thou ? 

Oh, whither shall I go to find 
The secret of Thy resting-place ? 

Is there no holy wing for me, 
That, soaring, I may search the space 

Of highest heaven for Thee ? 

Oh, would I were as free to rise 
As leaves on autumn's whirlv/ind 
borne, — 
The arrowy light of sunset skies. 

Or sound, or ray, or star of morn, 
Which melts in heaven at twilight's 
close, *' 

Or aught which soars unchecked 
and free 
Through earth and heaven; that I 
might lose 
Myself in finding Thee 1 



II 



LE CRI DE l'aME 

" Quand le souffle divin qui flotte sur le 
moude." 

When tlie breath divine is flowing. 
Zephyr-like o'er all things going, 
And, as the touch of viewless fingers, 
Softly on my soul it lingers, 
Open to a breath the lightest, 
Conscious of a touch the slightest, — 
As some calm, still lake, whereon 
Sinks the snowy-bosomed swan, 
And the glistening water-rings 
Circle round her moving wings: 10 
When my upward gaze is turning 
Where the stars of heaven are burning 

Through the deep and dark abyss, — 
Flowers of midnight's wilderness, 
Blowing with the evening's breath 
Sweetly in their Maker's path: 
When the breaking day is flushing 
All the east, and liglit is gushing 
Upward througli the horizon's haze, 
Sheaf-like, with its thousand rays, ao 
Spreading, until all above 
Overflows with joy and love, 
And below, on earth's green bosom. 
All is changed to light and blossom: 

When my waking fancies over 
Forms of brightness flit and hover 
Holy as the seraphs are. 
Who by Zion's fountains wear 
On their foreheads, white and broad, 
" Holiness unto the Lord ! " ^o 

When, inspired with rapture high, 
It would seem a single sigh 
Could a world of love create; 
That my life could know no date, 
And my eager thoughts could fill 
Heaven and Earth, o'erflowing still 1 

Then, O Father ! Thou alone, 
From the shadow of Thy throne, 
To tiie sighing of my breast 
And its rapture aiiswer(^st. 40 

All my tliouglits, which, upward 

winging, 
Bathe where Thy own liglit is spring- 
ing, — 
All mv yearnings to bo free 
Are as echoes answering Thee ! 



5i8 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Seldom upon lips of mine, 
Father! rests that name of Thine; 
Deep within my inmost breast, 
In the secret place of mind, 
Like an awful presence shrined, 
Doth the dread idea rest ! so 

Hushed and holy dwells it there, 
Prompter of the silent prayer, 
Lifting up my spirit's eye, 
And its faint, but earnest cry, 
From its dark and cold abode, 
Unto Thee, my Guide and God ! 



THE FAMILIST'S HYMN 

Father ! to Thy suffering poor 

Strength and grace and faith im- 
part, 
And with Thy own love restore 

Comfort to the broken heart ! 
Oh, the failing ones confirm 

With a holier strength of zeal ! 
Give Thou not the feeble worm 

Helpless to the spoiler's heel ! 

Father ! for Thy holy sake 

We are spoiled and hunted thus; lo 
Joyful, for Thy truth we take 

Bonds and burthens unto us: 
Poor, and weak, and robbed of all, 

Weary with our daily task, 
That Thy truth may never fall 

Through our weakness, Lord, we 
ask. 

Round our fired and wasted homes 

Flits the forest-bird unscared, 
And at noon the wild beast comes 

Where our frugal meal was shared; 
For the song of praises there 21 

Shrieks the crow the livelong day; 
For the sound of evening prayer 

Howls the evil beast of prey. 

Sweet the songs we loved to sing 

Underneath Thy holy sky; 
Words and tones that used to bring 

Tears of joy in every eye; 
Dear the wrestling hours of prayer, 

When we gathered knee to knee, 30 
Blameless youtli and hoary hair. 

Bowed, O God, alone to Thee. 

As Thine early children. Lord, 

Shared their wealth and daily bread, 



Even so, with one accord. 
We, in love, each other fed. 

Not with us the miser's hoard, 
Not with us his grasping hand; 

Equal round a common board. 

Drew our meek and brother band ! 40 

Safe our quiet Eden lay 

When the war-whoop stirred the 
land 
And the Indian turned away 

From our home his bloody hand. 
Well that forest-ranger saw. 

That the burthen and the curse 
Of the white man's cruel law 

Rested also upon us. 

Torn apart, and driven forth 

To our toiling hard and long, 50 
Father ! from the dust of earth 

Lift we still our grateful song ! 
Grateful, that in bonds we share 

In Thy love which maketh free; 
Joyful, that the wrongs we bear. 

Draw us nearer. Lord, to Thee ! 

Grateful ! that where'er we toil, — 

By Wachuset's wooded side. 
On Nantucket's sea-worn isle. 

Or by wild Neponset's tide, — 60 
Still, in spirit, we are near. 

And our evening hymns, which rise 
Separate and discordant here, 

Meet and mingle in the skies ! 

Let the scoffer scorn and mock. 

Let the proud and evil priest 
Rob the needy of his flock. 

For his wine-cup and his feast, — 
Redden not Thy bolts in store 

Through the blackness of Thy 
skies ! 70 

For the sighing of the poor 

Wilt Thou not, at length, arise ? 

Worn and wasted, oh ! how long 

Shall thy trodden poor complain ? 
In Thy name they bear the wrong, 

In Thy cause the bonds of pain ! 
Melt oppression's heart of steel. 

Let the haughty priesthood see, 
And their blinded follow^ers feel. 

That in us they mock at Thee ! 80 

In Thy time, O Lord of hosts. 
Stretch abroad that hand to save 



EZEKIEL 



519 




" Who trembled at my warning word ? 
Who owned the prophet of the Lord ? ' 



Which of old, on Egypt's coasts ^ 
Smote apart the Red Seas 
waves ! 
Lead us from this evil land, 

From the spoiler set us free, 
And once more our gathered band 
Heart to heart, shall worship 
Thee ! 



EZEKIEL 

Ezekiel xxxiii. 30-33. 

They hear Thee not, O God! nor 

see* 
Beneath Thy rod tiiey mock at Thee; 
The princes of our ancient line 
Lie drunken witii Assynan wine; 



520 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



The priests around Thy altar speak 
The false words which their hearers 

seek; 
And hymns which Chaldea's wanton 

maids 
Have sung in Dura's idol-shades 
Are with the Levites' chant ascending, 
With Zion's holiest anthems blending ! 

On Israel's bleeding bosom set, n 
The heathen heel is crushing yet; 
The towers upon our holy hill 
Echo Chaldean footsteps still. 
Our wasted shrines, — who weeps for 

them ? 
Who mourneth for Jerusalem ? 
Who turneth from his gains away ? 
Whose knee with mine is bowed to 

pray? 
Who, leaving feast and purpling 

cup. 
Takes Zion's lamentation up ? 20 

A sad and thoughtful youth, I went 
With Israel's early banishment; 
And where the sullen Chebar crept, 
The ritual of my fathers kept. 
The water for the trench I drew. 
The firstling of the flock I slew. 
And, standing at the altar's side, 
I shared the Levites' lingering pride, 
That still, amidst her mocking foes. 
The smoke of Zion's offering rose. 30 

In sudden whirlwind, cloud and flame. 
The Spirit of the Highest came ! 
Before mine eyes a vision passed, 
A glory terrible and vast; 
With dreadful eyes of living things. 
And sounding sweep of angel wings. 
With circling light and sapphire 

throne. 
And flame-like form of One thereon. 
And voice of that dread Likeness 

sent 
Down from the crystal firmament ! 40 

The burden of a prophet's power 
Fell on me in that fearful hour; 
From off unutterable woes 
The curtain of the future rose; 
I saw far down the coming time 
The fiery chastisement of crime; 
With noise of mingling hosts, and 

jar 
Of falling towers and shouts of war, 



I saw the nations rise and fall. 
Like fire-gleams on my tent's white 
wall. 



50 



In dream and trance, I saw the slain 
Of Egypt heaped like harvest grain. 
I saw the walls of sea-born Tyre 
Swept over by the spoiler's fire; 
And heard the low, expiring moan 
Of Edom on his rocky throne; 
And, woe is me ! the wild lament 
From Zion's desolation sent; 
And felt within my heart each blow 
Which laid her holy places low. 60 

In bonds and sorrow, day by day, 
Before the pictured tile I lay; 
And there, as in a mirror, saw 
The coming of Assyria's war; 
Her swarthy lines of spearmen pass 
Like locusts through Bethhoron's 

grass; 
I saw them draw their stormy hem 
Of battle round Jerusalem; 68 

And, listening, heard the Hebrew wail 
Blend with the victor-trump of 'Baal! 

Who trembled at my warning word ? 
Who owned the prophet of the Lord ? 
How mocked the rude, how scoffed 

the vile. 
How stung the Levites' scornful smile, 
As o'er my spirit, dark and slow. 
The shadow crept of Israel's woe 
As if the angel's mournful roll 
Had left its record on my soul, 
And traced in lines of darkness there 
The picture of its great despair ! 80 

Yet ever at the hour I feel 
My lips in prophecy unseal. 
Prince, priest, and Levite gather near. 
And Salem's daughters haste to hear, 
On Chebar's waste and alien shore. 
The harp of Judali swept once more. 
They listen, as in Babel's throng 
The Chaldeans to the dancer's song, 
Or wild sabbeka's nightly play, 
As careless and as vain as they. 90 



And thus, O Prophet-bard of old, 
Hast thou thy tale of sorrow told I 
The same which earth's unwelcome 

seers 
Have felt in all succeeding years. 



WHAT THE VOICE SAID 



521 



Sport of tlie changeful multitude, 
Nor calmly heard nor understood, 
Their song has seemed a trick of art. 
Their warnings but the actor's part. 
With bonds, and scorn, and evil will. 
The world requites its prophets still. 

So was it when the Holy One loi 

The garments of the flesh put on ! 
Men followed where the Highest led 
For common gifts of daily bread, 
And gross of ear, of vision dim, 
Owned not the Godlike power of Him. 
Vain as a dreamer's words to them 
His wail above Jerusalem, 
And meaningless the watch He kept 
Through which His weak disciples 
slept. no 

Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art, 
For God's great purpose set apart. 
Before whose far-discerning eyes, 
The Future as the Present lies ! 
Beyond a narrow-bounded age 
Stretches thy prophet-heritage. 
Through Heaven's vast spaces angel- 
trod, 
And through the eternal years of God ! 
Thy audience, worlds ! — all things to 

be 
The witness of the Truth in thee ! 120 

WHAT THE VOICE SAID 

Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil, 
"Lord!" I cried in sudden ire, 

" From Thy right hand, clothed with 
thunder, 
Shake the bolted fire ! 

"Love is lost, and Faith is dying; 

With the brute the man is sold; 
And the dropping blood of labor 

Hardens into gold. 

" Here the dying wail of Famine, 
There the battle's groan of pain; 10 

And, in silence, smooth-faced Mam- 
mon 
Reaping men like grain. 

"'Where is God, tliat we should fear 
Him?' 

Thus the earth-born Titans say; 
' God ! if Thou art living, hear us ! ' 

Thus the weak ones pray." 



"Thou, the patient Heaven upbraid- 
ing," 

Spake a solemn Voice within; 
" Weary of our Lord's forbearance, 

Art thou free from sin ? 20 

" Fearless brow to Him uplifting, 
Canst thou for His thunders call, 

Knowing that to guilt's attraction 
Evermore they fall ? 

" Know'st thou not all germs of evil 
In thy heart await their time ? 

Not thyself, but God's restraining, 
Stays their growth of crime. 

" Couldst thou boast, O child of weak- 
ness ! 

O'er the sons of wrong and strife, 30 
Were their strong temptations planted 

In thy path of life ? 

" Thou hast seen two streamlets gush- 
ing 

From one fountain, clear and free, 
But by widely varying channels 

Searching for tiie sea. 

"Glideth one through greenest val- 
leys. 
Kissing them with lips still sweet; 
One, mad roaring down the moun- 
tains. 
Stagnates at their feet. 40 

"Is it choice wherel)v the Parsee 
Kneels before iiis mother's fire? 

In his black tent did the Tartar 
Choose his wandering sire ? 

" He alone, whose liand is boimding 

Human power and human will, 
Looking through each soul's surround- 

Knows its good or ill. 

" For thyself, while wrong and sorrow 
Make to thee their strong appeal, 50 

Coward wert thou not to utter 
What the heart must feel. 

" Earnest words must needs be spoken 
When the warm iieart bleeds or 
burns 

With its scorn of wrong, or pity 
For the wronged, by turns. 



522 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



" But, bv all thy nature's weakness, 
Hidden faults and follies known, 

Be thou, in rebuking evil. 

Conscious of thine own. 60 

" Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty 
To thv lips her trumpet set. 

But with harsher blasts shall mingle 
Wailings of regret." 

Cease not. Voice of holy speaking. 
Teacher sent of God, be near. 

Whispering through the day's cool 
silence. 
Let my spirit hear ! 

So, when thoughts of evil-doers 

Waken scorn, or hatred move, 70 

3hall a mournful fellow-feeling 
Temper all with love. 



THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE 

A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN 

To weary hearts, to mourning homes, 
God's meekest Angel gently comes : 
No power has he to banish pain. 
Or give us back our lost again; 
And yet in tenderest love, our dear 
And Heavenly Father sends him here. 

There's quiet in that Angel's glance. 
There's rest in his still countenance! 
He mocks no grief with idle cheer. 
Nor wounds with words the mourner's 

ear; 
But ills and woes he may not cure 
He kindly trains us to endure. 

Angel of Patience ! sent to calm 
Our feverish brows with cooling 

palm; 
To lay the storms of hope and fear. 
And reconcile life's smile and tear; 
The throljs of wounded pride to still, 
And make our own our Father's will ! 

O thou who mournest on thy way, 
With longings for the close of day; 
He walks with thee, that Angel Icind, 
And gently whispers, " Be resigned: 
Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell 
The dear Lord ordereth all things 
well!" 



THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER 
HUSBAND 

Against the sunset's glowing wall 
The city towers rise black and tall, 
Where Zorah, on its rocky height, 
Stands like an armed man in the light. 

Down Eshtaol's vales of ripened grain 
Falls like a cloud the night amain, 
And up the hillsides climbing slow 
The barley reapers homeward go. 

Look, dearest! how our fair child's 

head 
The sunset light hath hallowed, 10 
Where at this olive's foot he lies, 
Uplooking to the tranquil skies. 

Oh, while beneath the fervent heat 
Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat, 
I've watched, with mingled joy and 

dread. 
Our child upon his grassy bed. 

Joy, which the mother feels alone 
Whose morning hope like mine had 

flown. 
When to her bosom, over-blessed, 
A dearer life than hers is pressed. 20 

Dread, for the future dark and still, 
Which shapes our dear one to its will; 
Forever in his large calm eyes, 
I read a tale of sacrifice. 

The same foreboding awe I felt 
When at the altar's side we knelt. 
And he, who as a pilgrim came. 
Rose, winged and glorious, through 
the flame. 

I slept not, though the wild bees made 
A dreamlike murmuring in the shade. 
And on me the warm -fingered hours 3 1 
Pressed with the drowsy smell of flow- 
ers. 

Before me, in a vision, rose 

The hosts of Israel's scornful foes, — 

Rank over rank, helm, shield, and 

spear. 
Glittered in noon's hot atmosphere. 

I heard their boast and bitter word. 
Their mockery of the Hebrew's Lord; 



MY SOUL AND I 



523 



I saw their hands His ark assail, 
Their feet profane His holy veil. 40 

No angel down the blue space spoke, 
No thunder from the still sky broke; 
But in their midst, in power and awe, 
Like God's waked wrath, our child I 
saw! 

A child no more ! — harsh-browed and 

strong, 
He towered a giant in the throng, 
And down his shoulders, broad and 

bare. 
Swept the black terror of his hair. 

He raised his arm — he smote amain; 
As round the reaper falls the grain, so 
So the dark host around him fell, 
So sank the foes of Israel ! 

Again I looked. In sunlight shone 
The towers and domes of Askelon; 
Priest, warrior, slave, a mighty crowd 
Within her idol temple bowed. 

Yet one knelt not; stark, gaunt, and 

blind, 
His arms the massive pillars twined, — 
An eyeless captive, strong with hate. 
He stood there like an evil Fate. 60 

The red shrines smoked, — the trum- 
pets pealed: 

He stooped, — the giant columns 
reeled ; 

Reeled tower and fane, sank arch and 
wall, 

And the thick dust-cloud closed o'er 
all! 

Above the shriek, the crash, the groan 
Of tlie fallen pride of Askelon, 
I heard, sheer down the echoing sky, 
A voice as of an angel cry, — 



70 



The voice of him, who at our side 
Sat through the golden eventide; 
Of him who, on thy altar's blaze. 
Rose fire-winged, with his song of 
praise. 

"Rejoice o'er Israel's broken chain. 
Gray mother of the mighty slain ! 
Rejoice ! " it cried, " he vanquisheth ! 
The strong in life is strong in death 1 



"To him shall Zorah's daughters raise 
Through coming years their hymns of 

praise. 
And gray old men at evening tell 
Of all he wrought for Israel. 80 

'■ And they who sing and they who hear 
Alike shall hold thy memory dear. 
And pour their blessings on thy head, 

mother of the miglity dead!" 

It ceased; and though a sound I heard 
As if great wings the still air stirred, 

1 only saw the barley sheaves 
And hills half hid by olive leaves. 

I bowed my face, in awe and fear, 
On the dear child who slumbered 
near; 90 

"With me, as with mv only son, 
O God," I said, " Thy wiU "be done ! " 



MY SOUL AND I 

Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark 

I would question thee, 
Alone in the shadow drear and stark 

With God and me ! 

Wliat, my soul, was thy errand here ? 

Was it mirth or ease, 
Or heaping up dust from year to year ? 

" Nay, none of these ! " 

Speak, soul, aright in His holy siglit 
Whose eye looks still 10 

And steadily on thee through the night : 
"To do Ilis will!" 

What hast thou done, O soul of mine, 
That thou trenil)lest so? 

Hast thou wrought His task, and kept 
the line 
He bade thee go ? 

What, silent alll art sad of cheer? 

Art fearful now ? 
When God seemed far and men were 
near. 

How brave wert thou ! «« 

Aha ! thou trenil^lest ! — well I see 

Thou'rt craven grown. 
Is it so hard with God and me 

To stand alone ? 



524 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Summon thy sunshine bravery back, 

wretched sprite ! 

Let me hear thy voice through this 
deep and black 
Abysmal night. 

What hast thou wrought for Right 
and Truth, 
For God and Man, 30 

From the golden hours of bright-eyed 
youth 
To life's mid span ? 

Ah, soul of mine, thy tones I hear, 

But weak and low, 
Like far sad murmurs on my ear 

They come and go. 

"I have wrestled stoutly with the 
Wrong, 
And borne the Right 
From beneath the footfall of the 
throng 
To life and light. 40 

"Wherever Freedom shivered a chain, 

God speed, quoth I; 
To Error amidst her shouting train 

1 gave the He." 

Ah. soul of mine ! ah, soul of mine ! 

Thy deeds are well: 
Were they wrought for Truth's sake or 
for thine ? 

My soul, pray tell. 

"Of all the work my hand hath 
wrought 

Beneath the sky, . so 

Save a place in kindly human thought. 

No gain have I." 

Go to, go to ! for thy very self 

Thy deeds were done: 
Thou for fame, the miser for pelf, 

Your end is one ! 

And where art thou going, soul of 
mine? 

Canst see the end ? 
And whither this troubled life of thine 

Evermore doth tend? 60 

What daunts thee now ? what shakes 
thee so ? 
My sad soul, say. 



" I see a cloud like a curtain low 
Hang o'er my way. 

"Whither I go I cannot tell: 
That cloud hangs black, 

High as the heaven and deep as hell 
Across my track. 

" I see its shadow coldly enwrap 

The souls before, 70 

Sadly they enter it, step by step. 
To return no more. 

"They shrink, they shudder, dear 
God ! they kneel 
To Thee in prayer. 
They shut their eyes on the cloud, but 
feel 
That it still is there. 

"In vain they turn from the dread 
Before 
To the Known and Gone; 
For while gazing behind them ever- 
more 
Their feet glide on. 80 

" Yet, at times, I see upon sweet pale 
faces 

A light begin 
To tremble, as if from holy places 

And shrines within. 

"And at times methinks their cold 
lips move 
With hymn and prayer. 
As if somewhat of awe, but more of 
love 
And hope were there. 

" I call on the souls who have left the 
light 

To reveal their lot; go 

I bend mine ear to that wall of night, 

And they answer not. 

" But I hear around me sighs of pain 

And the cry of fear. 
And a sound like the slow sad drop- 
ping of rain, 

Each drop a tear ! 

" Ah, the cloud is dark, and day by day 

I am moving thither; 
I must pass beneath it on my way — 

God pity me ! — whither ?" 100 



MY SOUL AND I 



525 



Ah, soul of mine ! so brave and wise 

In the Ufe-storm loud, 
Fronting so calmly all human eyes 

In the sunlit crowd ! 

Now standing apart with God and me 

Thou art weakness all. 
Gazing vainly after the things to be 

Through Death's dread wall. 

But never for this, never for this 

Was thy being lent; no 

For the craven's fear is but selfish- 
ness. 
Like his merriment. 

Folly and Fear are sisters twain: 

One closing her eyes, 
The other peopling the dark inane 

With spectral lies. 

Know well, my soul, God's hand con- 
trols 

Whate'er thou fearest; 
Round Him in calmest music rolls 

Whate'er thou hearest. 120 

What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, 
And the end He knoweth, 

And not on a blind and aimless way 
The spirit goeth. 

Man sees no future, — a phantom 
show 
Is alone before him; 
Past Time is dead, and the grasses 
grow. 
And flowers bloom o'er him. 

Nothing before, nothing behind; 

The steps of Faith 130 

Fall on the seeming void, and find 

The rock beneath. 

The Present, the Present is all thou 
hast 

For thy sure possessing; 
Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast 

Till it gives its blessing. 

Why fear the night ? why shrink from 
Death, 
That phantom wan ? 
There is nothing in heaven or earth 
beneath 
Save God and man. mo 



Peopling the shadows we turn from 
Him 

And from one another; 
All is spectral and vague and dim 

Save God and our brother ! 

Like warp and woof all destinies 

Are woven fast. 
Linked in sympathy like the keys 

Of an organ vast. 

Pluck one thread, and the web ye 
mar; 
Break but one 150 

Of a thousand keys, and the paining 
jar 
Through all will run. 

O restless spirit ! wherefore strain 

Beyond thy sphere? 
Heaven and hell, with their joy and 
pain, 

Are now and here. 

Back to thyself is measured well 

All thou hast given ; 
Thy neighbor's wrong is thy present 
hell, 

His bliss, thy heaven. 160 

And in life, in death, in dark and 
light. 
All are in God's care: 
Sound the black abyss, pierce the 
deep of night, 
And He is there ! 

All which is real now remainetli, 

And fadeth never: 
The hand which upholds it now sus- 
taineth 

The soul forever. 

Leaning on Him, make with reverent 
meekness 
His own thy will, 170 

And with strength from Him shall tiiy 
utter weakness 
Life's task fulfil; 

And that cloud itself, which now be- 
fore thee 
Lies dark in view, 
Shall with l)oams of light from the 
inner glory 
Be stricken through. 



526 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



And like meadow mist through au- 
tumn's dawn 
Uprolling thin, 
Its thickest folds when about thee 
drawn 
Let sunlight in. iSo 

Then of what is to be, and of what is 
done, 

Why queriest thou ? 
The past and the time to be are one, 

And both are now ! 

WORSHIP 

Pure religion and undefiled before God 
and the Father is this, To visit the father- 
less and widows in their affliction, and to 
keep himself unspotted from the world. — 
James i. 27. 

The Pagan's myths through marble 
lips are spoken, 
And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit 
and moan 
Round fane and altar overthrown and 
broken. 
O'er tree-grown barrow and gray 
ring of stone. 

Blind Faith had martyrs in those old 
high Places, 
The Syrian hill grove and the 
Druid's wood. 
With mothers offering, to the Fiend's 
embraces. 
Bone of their bone, and blood of 
their own blood. 

Red altars, kindhng through that 
night of error, 
Smoked with warm blood beneath 
the cruel eye lo 

Of lawless Power and sanguinary Ter- 
ror, 
Throned on the circle of a pitiless 
sky; 

Beneath whose baleful shadow, over- 
casting 
All heaven above, and blighting 
earth below, 
The scourge grew red, the lip grew 
pale witli fasting, 
And man's oblation was his fear and 
woe! 



Then through great temples swelled 
the dismal moaning 
Of dirge-like music and sepulchral 
prayer; 
Pale wizard priests, o'er occult sym- 
bols droning. 
Swung their white censers in the 
burdened air: 20 

As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor 
Of gums and spices could the Un- 
seen One please; 
As if His ear could bend, with childish 
favor. 
To the poor flattery of the organ keys! 

Feet red from war-fields trod the 
church aisles holy. 
With trembling reverence: and the 
oppressor there. 
Kneeling before his priest, abased and 
lowly. 
Crushed human hearts beneath his 
knee of prayer. 

Not such the service the benignant 
Father 
Requireth at His earthly children's 
hands: 3° 

Not the poor offering of vain rites, but 
rather 
The simple duty man from man 
demands. 

For Earth He asks it: the full joy of 
heaven 
Knoweth no change of waning or 
increase; 
The great heart of the Infinite beats 
even. 
Untroubled flows the river of His 
peace. 

He asks no taper lights, on high sur- 
rounding 
The priestly altar and the saintly 
grave. 
No dolorous chant nor organ music 
sounding, 
Nor incense clouding up the twi- 
light nave. 40 

For he whom Jesus loved hath truly 
spoken : 
The holier worship which He deigns 
to bless 



THE HOLY LAND 



527 



Restores the lost, and binds the spirit 
broken, 
And feeds the widow and the father- 
less ! 

Types of our human weakness and our 

sorrow ! 
Who lives unhaunted by his loved 

ones dead ? 
Who, with vain longing, seeketh not 

to borrow 
From stranger eyes the home lights 

which have fled ? 

O brother man ! fold to thy heart thy 
brother; 
Where pity dwells, the peace of God 
is there; so 

To worship rightly is to love each 
other. 
Each smile a h5''mn, each kindly 
deed a prayer. 

Follow with reverent steps the great 
example 
Of Him whose holy work was " do- 
ing good;" 
So shall the wide earth seem our Fa- 
ther's temple, 
Each loving life a psalm of grati- 
tude. 

Then shall all shackles fall; the 
stormy clangor 
Of wild war music o'er the earth 
shall cease; 
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of 
anger. 
And in its ashes plant the tree of 



peace 



60 



THE HOLY LAND 

Paraphrased from the lines in Lamar- 
tine's Adieu to Marseilles, beginning 
" Je n'ai pas navigu^ sur I'oc^an de sable." 

I HAVE not felfc, o'er seas of sand, 
The rocking of the desert bark; 
Nor laved at Hebron's fount my 
hand. 
By Hebron's palm-trees cool and 
dark; 
Nor pitched my tent at even-fall, 
On dust where Job of old has lain, 



Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall 
The dream of Jacob o'er again. 

One vast world-page remains unread; 
How shine the stars in Chaldea's 
sky, ,0 

How sounds the reverent pilgrim's 
tread, 
How beats the heart with God so 
nigh ! 
How round gray arch and column 
lone 
The spirit of the old time broods, 
And sighs in all the winds that 
moan 
Along the sandy solitudes ! 

In thy tall cedars, Lebanon, 

I have not heard the nations' cries. 
Nor seen thy eagles stooping down 

Where buried Tyre in ruin lies. 20 
The Christian's prayer I have not 
said 

In Tadmor's temples of decay. 
Nor startled, with my dreary tread, 

The waste where Memnon's empire 
lay. 

Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide, 
O Jordan ! heard the low lament. 
Like that sad wail along thy side 
Which Israel's mournful prophet 
sent! 
Nor thrilled witliin that grotto lone 
Where, deep in night, the Bard of 
Kings 30 

Felt hands of fire direct his own. 
And sweep for God the conscious 
strings. 

I have not climbed to Olivet, 

Nor laid me where my Saviour lay, 
And left His trace of tears as yet 

By angel eyes unwept away; 
Nor watched, at midnight's solemn 
time, 

The garden where His prayer and 
groan, 
Wrung by His sorrow and our crime. 

Rose to One listening ear alone. 4© 

I have not kissed the rock-lie wn grot 
Where in His mother's arms He lay, 

Nor knelt upon the sacred spot 

Where last His footsteps pressed the 
clay; 



528 



RELIGIOUS POE^fS 




" In thy tall cedars, Lebanon, 

I have not heard tlie nations' cries " 



Nor looked on that sad mountain head, 

Nor smote my sinful breast, where 

wide 

His arms to fold the world He spread, 

And bowed His head to bless — and 

died 1 



THE REWARD 

Who, looking backward from his man- 
hood's prime, 

Sees not the spectre of his misspent 
time? 



ALL'S WELL 



529 



And, through the shade 
Of funeral cypress planted thick be- 
hind, 
Hears no reproachful whisper on the 
wind 
From his loved dead ? 

Who bears no trace of passion's evil 

force ? 
Who shuns thy sting, O terrible Re- 
morse ? 
Who does not cast 
On the thronged pages of his memory's 

book, 
At times, a sad and half-reluctant look. 
Regretful of the past ? 

Alas ! the evil which we fain would 

shun 
We do, and leave the wished-for good 
undone; 
Our strength to-day 
Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to 

fall; 
Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all 
Are we alway. 

Yet who, thus looking backward o'er 

his years, 
Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful 
tears, 
If he hath been 
Permitted, weak and sinful as he was, 
To cheer and aid, in some ennobling 
cause, 
His fellow-men ? 

If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in 
A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin; 

If he hath lent 
Strength to the weak, and, in an hour 

of need. 
Over the suffering, mindless of his 
creed 
Or home, hath bent; 

He has not hved in vain, and while he 

gives 
The praise to Him, in whom he moves 

and lives. 
With thankful heart; 
He gazes backward, and with hope 

before. 
Knowing that from his works he never 

more 
Can henceforth part. 



THE WISH OF TO-DAY 

I ASK not now for gold to gild 

With mocking shine a weary frame; 

The yearning of the mind is stilled, 
I ask not now for Fame. 

A rose-cloud, dimly seen above, 
Melting in heaven's blue depths away ; 

Oh, sweet, fond dream of human Love ! 
For thee I may not pray. 

But, bowed in lowliness of mind, 

I make my humble wishes known; 
I only ask a will resigned, 

Father, to Thine own ! 

To-day, beneath Thy chastening eye 

1 crave alone for peace and rest. 
Submissive in Thy hand to lie, 

And feel that it is best. 

A marvel seems the Universe, 
A miracle our Life and Death; 

A mystery which I cannot pierce, 
Around, above, beneath. 

In vain I task my acliing brain, 
In vain tlie sage's thought I scan, 

I only feel how weak and vain, 
How poor and blind, is man. 

And now my spirit sighs for home. 
And longs for light whereby to see. 

And, like a wearv child, would come, 
O Father, unto Thee ! 

Though oft, like letters traced on sand, 
My weak resolves have passed away. 

In mercy lend Thy helping hand 
Unto my prayer to-day ! 



ALL'S WELL 

The clouds, which rise with thunder, 
slake 

Our thirsty souls with rain; 
The blow most dreaded falls to break 

From off our limbs a chain; 
And wrongs of man to man but make 

The love of God more plain. 
As through the shadowy lens of even 
The eye looks fartlu^st into heaven 
On gleams of star and depths of blue 
The glaring sunshine never knew I 



S3^ 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



INVOCATION 

Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of 

old, 
Formless and void the dead earth 

rolled; 
Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, 

blind 
To the p;rcat lights which o'er it 

shined; 
No sonnd, no ray, no warmth, no 

breath, — 
A dumb despair, a wandering 

death. 

To that dark, weltering horror 

came 
Thy spirit, like a subtle flame, — 
A breath of life electrical, 
Awakening and transforming all. 
Till beat and thrilled in every 

jiart 
The pulses of a living heart. 

Then knew their bounds the land and 
sea; 

Then smiled the bloom of mead and 
tree; 

From flower to moth, from beast to 
man, 

The quick creative impulse ran; 

And earth, with life from thee re- 
newed, 

Was in thy holy eyesight good. 

As lost and void, as dark and 

cold 
And formless as that earth of old; 
A wanderijig waste of storm and 

night, 
Midst spheres of song and realms of 

light; 
A blot upon thy holy sky, 
Untouched, unwarned of thee, am 



O Thou who movest on the deep 

Of sj-iirits, wake my own from 

sleep ! 
Its darkness melt, its coldness 

warm , 
The lost restore, the ill transform, 
That flower and fruit henceforth may 

be 
Its grateful offering, worthy Thee. 



QUESTIONS OF LIFE 

" And the angel that was sent unto me, 
whose name was Uriel, gave me an answer, 

" And said, Tliy heart hath gone too far in 
this worhl, and tliinkest thou to comprehend 
the way d' the Most High ? 

" Then said I, Yea, my Lord. . . . 

" Then said he unto me, Go th}' way,weigh 
me the weight of the fire or measure me the 
blast of the wind, or call me again the hour 
that is past." — 2 Esdras iv. 

A BENDING staff I would not break, 

A feeble faith I would not shake. 

Nor even rashly pluck away 

The error which some truth may 
stay. 

Whose loss might leave the soul with- 
out 

A shield against the shafts of doubt. 

And yet, at times, when over all 
A darker mystery seems to fall, 
(May God forgive the child of dust. 
Who seeks to know, where Faith 
should trust !) lo 

I raise the questions, old and dark. 
Of ITzdom's tempted patriarch. 
And, speech-confounded, build again 
The baffled tower of Shinar's plain. 

I am : how little more I know ! 
Whence came I? Whither do I go? 
A centred self, which feels and is; 
A cry between the silences; 
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife 
With svmshine on tlie hills of life; 20 
A shaft from Nature's (juiver cast 
Into the l*'uture from the Past; 
Between the cradle and the shroud, 
A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud. 

Thorough the vastness, arching all, 
I see the great stars rise and fall, 
The rounding seasons come and go. 
The tided oceans ebb and flow; 
The tokens of a central force. 
Whose circles, in their widening 

course, 30 

O'erlap and move the universe; 
The workings of the law whence 

springs 
The rhythmic harmony of things, 
Which shapes in earth the darkling 

spar. 
And orbs in heaven the morning star. 



QUESTIONS OF LIFE 



531 



Of all I see, in earth and sky, — 
Star, flower, beast, bird, — what part 

have I ? 
This conscious life, — is it the same 
Which thrills the universal frame, 
Whereby the caverned crystal shoots 40 
And mounts the sap from forest roots, 
Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells 
When Spring makes green her native 

dells ? 
How feels the stone the pang of birth, 
Which brings its sparkling prism 

forth ? 
The forest-tree the throb which gives 
The life-blood to its new-born leaves? 
Do bird and l^lossom feel, like me, 
Life's many-folded mystery, — 
The wonder which it is to be ? so 

Or stand I severed and distinct. 
From Nature's chain of life unlinked ? 
Allied to all, yet not the less 
Prisoned in separate consciousness. 
Alone o'erburdened with a sense 
Of life, and cause, and consequence ? 

In vain to me the Sphinx propounds 
The riddle of her sights and sounds; 
Back still the vaulted mystery gives 
The echoed question it receives. 60 
What sings the brook ? Wliat oracle 
Is in the pine-tree's organ swell ? 
What may the wind's low burden 

be? 
The meaning of the moaning sea ? 
The hieroglyphics of the stars? 
Or clouded sunset's crimson bars ? 
I vainly ask, for mocks my skill 
The trick of Nature's cipher still. 

I turn from Nature unto men, 

I ask the stvlus and the pen; 70 

What sang the bards of old? What 

meant 
The propliets of the Orient ? 
The rolls of buried Egypt, hid 
In painted tomb and pyramid ? 
What mean Idiimea's arrowy lines. 
Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs? 
How speaks the primal thought of 

man 
From the grim carvings of Copan ? 
Where rests the secret? Where the 

keys 
Of the old death-bolted mysteries ? 80 
Alas! the dead retain their trust; 
Dust hath no answer from the dust. 



The great enigma still unguessed, 

Unanswered the eternal quest; 

I gather up the scattered rays 

Of wisdom in the early days, 

Faint gleams and broken, like the 

light 
Of meteors in a northern night, 
Betraying to the darkling earth 
The unseen sun which gave them 

birth; 90 

I listen to the sibyl's chant. 
The voice of priest and hierophant; 
I know wliat Indian Kreeshna saith, 
And what of life and what of death 
The demon taught to Socrates; 
And what, l)eneath his garden-trees 
Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread, 
The solemn-thoughted Plato said; 
Nor lack I tokens, great or small. 
Of God's clear light in each and all, 100 
While holding with more dear regard 
The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard, 
The starry pages promise-lit 
With Christ's Evangel over-writ, 
Thy miracle of life and death, 
O Holy One of Nazareth ! 

On Aztec ruins, gray and lone, 
Tiie circling serpent coils in stone, — 
Type of the endless and unknown; 
Whereof we seek the clue to find, no 
With groping fingers of the blind ! 
Forever souglit, and never found, 
We trace that serpent-symbol round 
Our resting-place, our starting bound ! 
Oh, thriftlessness of dream and guess! 
Oh, wisdom which is foolishness ! 
Why idly seek from outward things 
The answer inward silence brings? 
Whv stretch bevond our i>roper sphere 
And age, for' that which lies so 

near? "° 

Why climb the far-off hills with 

pain, 
A nearer view of heaven to gain ? 
In lowliest depths of bosky dells 
The hermit Contemplation dwells. 
A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat, 
And lotus-twined his silent feet, 
Whence, piercing heavcn,with screened 

He sees at noon tlie stars, wliose light 
Shall glorify the coming night. 

Here let me pause, my quest forego ;i3o 
Enough for me to feel and know 



532 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



That He in whom the cause and end, 
The past and future, meet and 

blend, — 
Who, girt with his Immensities, 
Our vast and star-hung system sees, 
Small as the clustered Pleiades, — 
Moves not alone the heavenly quires. 
But waves the spring-time's grassy 

spires, 
Guards not archangel feet alone, 
But deigns to guide and keep my 

own; 140 

Speaks not alone the words of fate 
Which worlds destroy, and worlds 

create. 
But whispers in my spirit's ear. 
In tones of love, or warning fear, 
A language none beside may hear. 
To Him, from wanderings long and 

wild, 
I come, an over-wearied child, 
In cool and shade His peace to find, 
Like dew-fall settling on my mind. 
Assured that all I know is best, 150 
And humbly trusting for the rest, 
I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme 
Dark creed, and mournful eastern 

dream 
Of power, impersonal and cold, 
Controlling all, itself controlled. 
Maker and slave of iron laws, 
Alike the subject and the cause; 
From vain philosophies, that try 
The sevenfold gates of mystery. 
And, baffled ever, babble still, 160 

Word-prodigal of fate and will; 
From Nature, and her mockery. Art, 
And book and speech of men apart. 
To the still witness in my heart; 
With reverence waiting to behold 
His Avatar of love untold, 
The Eternal Beauty new and old ! 



FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS 

In calm and cool and silence, once 

again 
I find my old accustomed place 

among 
My brethren, where, perchance, no 

human tongue 
Shall utter words; where never 

hynm is sung, 
Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor 

censer swung, 



Nor dim light falling through the pic- 
tured pane ! 
There, syllabled by silence, let me 

hear 
The still small voice which reached the 

prophet's ear; 
Read in my heart a still diviner law 
Than Israel's leader on his tables 

saw ! 
There let me strive with each besetting 
sin, 
Recall my wandering fancies, and 

restrain 
The sore disquiet of a restless brain; 
And, as the path of duty is made 
plain, 
May grace be given that I may walk 
therein. 
Not like the hireling, for his selfish 
gain. 
With backward glances and reluctant 

tread. 
Making a merit of his coward dread, 
But, cheerful, in the light around 

me thrown, 
Walking as one to pleasant service 

led; 
Doing God's will as if it were my 
own. 
Yet trusting not in mine, but in His 
strength alone ! 



TRUST 

The same old baffling questions! O 

my friend, 
I cannot answer them. In vain I send 
My soul into the dark, where never 

burn 
The lamps of science, nor the na- 
tural light 
Of Reason's sun and stars ! I cannot 

learn 
Their great and solemn meanings, nor 

discern 
The awful secrets of the eyes which 

turn 
Evermore on us through the day 

and night 
With silent challenge and a dumb 

demand. 
Proffering the riddles of the dread un- 

kno"VATi, 
Like the calm Sphinxes, with their 

eyes of stone, 



TRINITAS 



533 



Questioning the centuries from their 
veils of sand I 
I have no answer for myself or thee, 
Save that I learned beside my mo- 
ther's knee; 
"All is of God that is, and is to be; 
And God is good." Let this suffice 

us still. 
Resting in childlike trust upon His 
will 
Who moves to His great ends un- 
til warted by the ill. 



TRINITAS 

At mom I prayed, " I fain would see 
How Three are One, and One is Three; 
Read the dark riddle unto me." 

I wandered forth; the sun and air 
I saw bestowed with equal care 
On good and evil, foul and fair. 

No partial favor dropped the rain; 
Alike the righteous and profane 
Rejoiced above their heading grain. 

And my heart murmured, " Is it meet 

That blindfold Nature thus should 

treat , " 

With equal hand the tares and 

wheat?" 

A presence melted through my 

mood, — 
A warmth, a light, a sense of good. 
Like sunshine through a winter wood. 

I saw that presence, mailed complete 
In her white innocence, pause to greet 
A fallen sister of the street. 

Upon her bosom snowy pure 

The lost one clung, as if secure 20 

From inward guilt or outward lure. 

"Beware!" I said; "in this I see 
No gain to her, l)ut loss to thee: 
Who touches pitch defiled must be." 

I passed the haunts of shame and 

sin. 
And a voice whispered, " Who therem 
Shall these lost souls to Heaven's 

peace win ? 



" Who there shall hope and health dis- 
pense, 
And lift the ladder up from thence 
Whose rounds are prayers of peni- 
tence?" 30 

I said, " No higher life they know; 
These earth-worms love to have it so. 
Who stoops to raise them sinks as 
low." 

That night with painful care I read 
What Hippo's samt and Calvin said; 
The living seeking to the dead ! 

In vain I turned, in weary quest. 
Old pages, where (God give them rest !) 
The poor creed-mongers dreamed and 
guessed 

And still I prayed, " Lord, let me see 
How Three are One, and One is 
Three; 41 

Read the dark riddle unto me!" 

Then something whispered, " Dost 

tliou pray 
For what thou hast ? This very day 
The Holy Three have crossed thy way. 

'' Did not the gifts of sun and air 

To good and ill alike declare 

The all-compassionate Father's care ? 

" In the white soul that stooped to raise 
The lost one from her evil ways, so 
Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels 
praise ! 

" A bodiless Divinity, 

The still small Voice that spake to 

thee 
Was the Holy Spirit's mystery ! 

" O blind of sight, of faith how small ! 
Father, and Son, and Holy Call; 
This day thou hast denied them all ! 

" Revealed in love and sacrifice. 
The Holiest passed before thine eyes. 
One and the same, in threefold guise.6o 

" The equal Father in rain and sun, 
His Christ in the good to evil done, 
His Voice in thv soul; — and the 
Three are One!" 



534 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



I shut my grave Aquinas fast; 
The monkish gloss of ages past, 
The schoohnan's creed aside I cast. 

And my heart answered, " Lord, I see 
How Three are One, and One is Three; 
Thy riddle hath been read to me!" 



THE SISTERS 

A PICTURE BY BARRY 

The shade for me, but over thee 
The lingering sunshine still; 

As, smiling, to the silent stream 
Comes down the singing rill. 

So come to me, my little one, — 
My years with thee I share. 

And mingle with a sister's love 
A mother's tender care. 

But keep the smile upon thy lip. 

The trust upon thy brow; 
Since for the dear one God hath called 

We have an angel now. 

Our mother from the fields of heaven 

vShall still her ear incline; 
Nor need we fear her human love 

Is less for love divine. 

The songs are sweet they sing beneath 

The trees of life so fair, 
But sweetest of the songs of heaven 

Shall be her children's prayer. 

Then, darling, rest upon my breast, 
And teach my heart to lean 

With thy sweet trust upon the arm 
Which folds us both unseen ! 



"THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR 

Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, 
Her stones of emptiness remain ; 

Around her sculptured mystery sweeps 
The lonely waste of Edom's plain. 

From the doomed dwellers in the cleft 
The bow of vengeance turns not 
back; 

Of all lier myriads none are left 
Along theWady Mousa's track. 



Clear in the hot Arabian day 

Her arches spring, her statues 
climb 

Unchanged, the graven wonders pay 
No tribute to the spoiler. Time ! 

Unchanged the awful lithograph 
Of power and glory undertrod; 

Of nations scattered like the chaff 
Blown from the threshing-floor of 
God. 

Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn 
From Petra's gates with deeper 
awe. 

To mark afar the burial urn 
Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor; 

And where upon its ancient guard 
Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing 
yet, — 
Looks from its turrets desertward. 
And keeps the watch that God has 
set. 

The same as when in thunders loud 
It heard the voice of God to man, 

As when it saw in fire and cloud 
The angels walk in Israel's van ! 

Or when from Ezion-Geber's way 
It saw the long procession file. 

And heard the Hebrew timl)rels play 
The music of the lordly Nile; 

Or saw the tabernacle pause, 

Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barnea's 
wells. 

While Moses graved the sacred laws, 
And Aaron swung his golden bells. 

Rock of the desert, prophet-sung ! 

How grew its shadowing pile at 
length, 
A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue, 

Of God's eternal love and strength. 

On lip of bard and scroll of seer, 
From age to age went down the 
name, 

Until the Shiloh's promised year, 
And Christ, the Rock of Ages, came ! 

The path of life we walk to-day 
Is strange as that the Hebrews 
trod; 



THE OVER-HEART 



535 




" Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, 
Her stones of emptiness remain " 



We need the shadowing rock, as 
they, — 
We need, hke them, the guides of 
God. 

God send His angels. Cloud and Fire, 
To lead us o'er the desert sand ! 

God give our hearts their long desire, 
His shadow in a weary land 1 

THE OVER-HEART 

"For of him, and through him, and to 
him are all things: to whom be glory for- 
ever! " — Romans xi. 36. 

Above, below, in sky and sod, 
In leaf and spar, in star and man. 
Well might the wise Athenian scan 

The geometric signs of God, 

The measured order of His plan. 



And India's mystics sang aright. 
Of the One Life pervading all, — 
One Being's tidal rise and fall 

In soul and form, in sound and 
sight, — 
Eternal outflow and recall. lo 

God is : and man in guilt and 
fear 
The central fact of Nature owns; 
Kneels, trembling, by his altar 
stones, 
And darkly dreams the ghastly smear 
Of blood appeases and atones. 

Guilt shapes the Terror: deep witliin 
The human heart the secret lies 
Of all the liideous deities; 

And, paintt^d on a ground of sin, 
The fabled gods of torment rise 1 ao 



536 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



And what is He ? The ripe grain nods, 
The sweet dews fall, the sweet flow- 
ers blow; 
But darker signs His presence show: 
The earthquake and the storm are 
God's, 
And good and evil interflow. 



Whose need the sage and magian 
owned, 
The loving heart of God behold, 
The hope for which the ages groaned ! 

Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery 
Wherewith mankind have deified 




Who lean like John upon His breast " 



O hearts of love ! O souls that turn 
Like sunflowers to the pure and 

best! 
To you the truth is manifest: 
For they the mind of Christ discern 
Who lean like John upon His 
breast ! 30 

In him of whom the sibyl told. 

For whom the prophet's harp was 
toned, 



Their hate, and selfishness, and 
pride ! 
Let the scared dreamer wake to see 
The Christ of Nazareth at his side ! 

What doth that holy Guide re- 
quire ? 41 
No rite of pain, nor gift of blood, 
But man a kindly brotherhood, 

Looking, where duty is desire, 
To Him, the beautiful and good. 



THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT 



537 



Gone be the faithlessness of fear, 
And let the pitying heaven's sweet 



ram 



Wash out the altar's bloody stain; 
The law of Hatred disappear, 
The law of Love alone remain 



50 



How fall the idols false and grim ! 
And lo ! their hideous wreck above 
The emblems of the Lamb and 
Dove! 
Man turns from God, not God from 
him; 
And guilt, in suffering, whispers 
Love ! 

The world sits at the feet of Christ, 
Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled; 
It yet shall touch His garment's 
fold. 

And feel the heavenly Alchemist 
Transform its very dust to gold. 60 

The theme befitting angel tongues 
Beyond a mortal's scope has grown. 
O heart of mine! with reverence 
own 
The fulness which to it belongs. 
And trust the unknown for the 
known. 



THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT 

"And I sought, whence is Evil: I set be- 
fore the eye of my spirit the whole creation ; 
whatsoever we see therein, —sea, earth, air, 
stars, trees, moral creatures, — yea, wiiat- 
soever there is we do not see, — angels and 
spiritual powers. Where is evil, and whence 
comes it, since God the Good hath created 
all things ? Whv made He anvthing at all 
of evil, and not rather by His Almightiness 
cause it not to be ? These thoughts I turned 
in my miserable heart, overcharged with 
most gnawing cares." "And, admonished 
to return to mvself, I entered even into my 
inmost soul, Thou being my guide, and 
beheld even bevond my soul and mind the 
Light unchangeable. 'He who knows the 
Truth knows what that Light is, and he 
that knows it knows Eternity! O Truth, 
who art Eternitv! Love, who art Truth! 
Eternitv, who art Love ! And I beheld that 
Thou madest all things good, and to Thee 
is nothing whatsoever evil. From the angel 
to the worm, from the lirst motion to the 
last. Thou settest each in its place, and 
everything is good in its kind. Woe is me ! 



— how high art Thou in the highest, how 
deep in the deepest! and Thou never de- 
l)artest from us, and we scarcely return to 
Thee." — Augustink's Soliloquitu, Book 
VH. 

The fourteen centuries fall away 

Between us and the Afric saint. 
And at his side we urge, to-day, 
The immemorial quest and old com- 
plaint. 

No outward sign to us is given, — 
From sea or earth comes no 
reply; 
Hushed as the warm Numidian hea- 
ven 
He vainly questioned bends our frozen 
sky. 

No victory comes of all our strife, — 

From all we grasp the meaning 

slips; lo 

The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, 

With the old question on her awful 

lips. 

In paths unknown we hear the feet 

Of fear l^efore, and guilt behind ; 
We pluck the wayside fruit, and oat 
Ashes and dust beneath its golden 
rind. 

From age to age descends unchecked 

The sad bequest of sire to son, 
The body's taint, the mind's defect; 
Through every web of life tiie dark 
threads run. 20 

Oh, why and whither? God knows 
all; 
I only know that He is good, 
And that whatever may befall 
Or here or there, must be the best that 
could. 

Between the dreadful cherubim 
A Father's face I still discern, 
As Moses looked of old on Him, 
And saw His glory into goodness 
turn! 

For He is merciful as just; 

And so, l>y faith correcting sight, 
I bow before His will, and trust 31 
Howe'er they seem He doetli all things 
right. 



538 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



And dare to hope that He will make 
The rugged smooth, the doubtful 
plain ; 
His mercy never quite forsake; 
His healing visit everj^ realm of pain; 

That suffering is not His revenge 

Upon His creatures weak and frail, 

Sent on a pathway new and strange 

With feet that wander and with eyes 

that fail; 40 

' That, o'er the crucible of pain, 
Watches the tender eye of Love 
The slow transmuting of the chain 
Whose links are iron below to gold 
above ! 

Ah me ! we doubt the shining skies, 
Seen through our shadows of of- 
fence, 
And drown with our poor childish 
cries 
The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence. 

And still we love the evil cause, 

And of the just effect complain: so 
We tread upon life's broken laws, 
And murmur at our self-inflicted pain; 

We turn us from the light, and find 
Our spectral shapes before us 
throAvn, 
As they who leave the sun behind 
Walk in the shadows of themselves 
alone. 

And scarce by will or strength of 
ours 
We set our faces to tlie day; 
Weak, wavering, blind, the Eternal 
Powers 
Alone can turn us from ourselves 
away. 60 

Our weakness is the strength of sin, 
But love must needs be stronger 
far, 
Outreaching all and gathering in 
The erring spirit and the wandering 
star. 

A Voice grows with the growing 
years; 
Earth, hushing down her bitter 
cry, 



Looks upward from her graves, and 
hears, 
" The Resurrection and the Life am I." 

O Love Divine ! — whose constant 
beam 
Shines on the eyes that will not 
see, 70 

And waits to bless us, while we 
dream 
Thou leavest us because we turn from 
thee ! 

All souls that struggle and aspire, 
All hearts of prayer by thee are 
lit; 
And, dim or clear, thy tongues of 
fire 
On dusky tribes and twilight centuries 
sit. 

Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed 

thou know'st, 

Wide as our need thy favors fall; 

The white wings of the Holy Ghost 

Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads 

of all. 80 

O Beauty, old yet ever new ! 

Eternal Voice, and Inward Word, 
The Ijogos of the Greek and Jew, 
The old sphere-music which the Sa- 
mian heard ! 

Truth which the sage and prophet 
saw, 
Long sought without, but found 
within, 
The Law of Love beyond all law. 
The Life o'erflooding mortal death and 
sin! 

Shine on us with the light which 
glowed 
Upon the trance-bound shep- 
herd's way, 90 
Who saw the Darkness overflowed 
And drowned by tides of everlasting 
Day. 

Shine, light of God ! — make broad 
thy scope 
To ail who sin and suffer; more 
And better than we dare to hope 
With Heaven's compassion make our 
longings poor ! 



ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER 



539 



THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL 

In that black forest, where, when day- 
is done. 

With a snake's stillness glides the 
Amazon 

Darkly from sunset to the rising sun, 

A cry, as of the pained heart of the 

wood. 
The long, despairing moan of solitude 
And darkness and the absence of all 

good, 

Startles the traveller, with a sound so 

drear, 
So full of hopeless agony and fear. 
His heart stands still and listens like 

his ear. 

The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell 

toll, lo 

Starts, drops his oar against the gun- 
wale's thole. 

Crosses himself, and whispers, " A lost 
soul!" 

" No,Sehor,notabird. Iknowitwell, — 
It is the pained soul of some infidel 
Or cursed heretic that cries from hell. 

"Poor fool! with hope still mocking 
his despair, 

He wanders, shrieking on the mid- 
night air 

For human pity and for Christian 
prayer. 

" Saints strike him dumb ! Our Holy 

Mother hath 
No prayer for him who, sinning unto 

death, 20 

Burns always in the furnace of God's 

wrath!" 

Thus to the baptized pagan's cruel lie, 
Lending new horror to that mournful 

cry. 
The voyager listens, making no reply. 

Dim burns the boat-lamp; shadows 
deepen round. 

From giant trees with snake-like creep- 
ers wound. 

And the black water glides without a 
sound. 



But in the traveller's heart a secret 

sense 
Of nature plastic to benign intents, 
And an eternal good in Providence, 30 

Lifts to the starry calm of heaven his 

eyes; 
And lo ! rebuking all earth's ominous 

cries. 
The Cross of pardon lights the tropic 

skies ! 

" Father of all ! " he urges his strong 

plea, 
"Thou lovest all: Thy erring child 

may be 
Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee ! 

"All souls are Thine; the wings of 

morning bear 
None from that Presence which is 

everywhere, 
Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art 

there. 

" Through sins of sense, perversities of 
will, 40 

Through doubt and pain, through 
guilt and shame and ill. 

Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature 
still. 

" Wilt thou not make. Eternal Source 

and Goal ! 
In Thy long years, life's broken circle 

whole. 
And change to praise the cry of a lost 

soul?" 



ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER 

Andrew Rykman's dead and gone; 

You can see his leaning slate 
In the graveyard, and thereon 

Read his name and date. 

" Trust is truer than our fears," 

Runs the legend tlirough the moss, 

" Gain is not in added years, 
Nor in death is loss." 

Still the feet tliat thither trod, 

All the friendly eyes are dim; jq 

Only Nature, now, and God 
Have a care for him. 



540' 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



There the dews of quiet fall, 

Singing birds and soft winds stray; 

Shall tiie tender Heart of all 
Be less kind than they ? 

What he was and what he is 
They wlio ask may haply find, 

If they read this prayer of his 

Wliich he left behind. 20 



Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare 

Shape in words a mortal's prayer ! 

Prayer, that, when my day is done, 

And I see its setting sun. 

Shorn and beamless, cold and dim, 

Sink beneath the horizon's rim, — 

When this ball of rock and clay 

Crutnbles from my feet away. 

And the solid shores of sense 

Melt into the vague immense, 30 

Father ! I may come to Thee 

Even with the beggar's plea. 

As the poorest of Thy poor. 

With my needs, and nothing more. 

Not as one who seeks his home 
With a step assured I come; 
Still behind the tread I hear 
Of my life-companion, Fear; 
Still a shadow deep and vast 
From my westering feet is cast, 40 
Wavering, doubtful, undefined. 
Never shapen nor outlined: 
From myself the fear has grown, 
And the shadow is my own. 
Yet, O Lord, through all a sense 
Of Thy tender providence 
Stays my failing heart on Thee, 
And confirms the feeble knee; 
And, at times, my worn feet press 
Spaces of cool quietness, so 

Lilied whiteness shone upon 
Not by light of moon or sun. 
Hours there be of inmost calm, 
Broken but by grateful psalm, 
When I love Thee more than fear 

Thee, 
And Thy blessed Christ seems near 

me. 
With forgiving look, as when 
He beheld the Magdalen. 
W\>11 I know that all things move 
To the spheral rliythm of love, — 60 
That to Thee, O Lord of all ! 
Notliing can of chance befall: 



Child and seraph, mote and star, 

Well Thou knowest what we are ! 

Through Thy vast creative plan 

Looking, from the worm to man, 

There is pity in Thine eyes, 

But no hatred nor surprise. 

Not in blind caprice of will. 

Not in cunning sleight of skill, 70 

Not for show of power, was wrought 

Nature's marvel in Thy thought. 

Never careless hand and vain 

Smites these chords of joy and pain; 

No immortal selfishness 

Plays the game of curse and bless: 

Heaven and earth are witnesses 

That Thy glory goodness is. 

Not for sport of mind and force 

Hast Thou made Thy universe, 80 

But as atmosphere and zone 

Of Thy loving heart alone. 

Man, who walketh in a show, 

Sees before him, to and fro. 

Shadow and illusion go; 

All things flow and fluctuate, 

Now contract and now dilate. 

In the welter of this sea. 

Nothing stable is but Thee; 

In this whirl of swooning trance, 90 

Thou alone art permanence; 

All without Thee only seems. 

All beside is choice of dreams. 

Never yet in darkest mood 

Doubted I that Thou wast good, 

Nor mistook my will for fate. 

Pain of sin for heavenly hate, — 

Never dreamed the gates of pearl 

Rise from out the burning marl. 

Or that good can only live 100 

Of the bad conservative. 

And through counterpoise of hell 

Heaven alone be possible. 

For myself alone I doubt; 

All is well, I know, without; 

I alone the beauty mar, 

I alone the music jar. 

Yet, with hands by evil stained. 

And an ear by discord pained, 

I am groping for the keys no 

Of the heavenly harmonies; 

Still within my heart I bear 

Love for all things good and fair. 

Hands of want or souls in pain 

Have not sought my door in vain ; 

I have kept my fealty good 

To the human brotherhood; 



THE ANSWER 



541 



Scarcely have 1 asked in prayer 

That which others might not share. 

I, who hear with secret shame 120 

Praise that paineth more than blame, 

Rich alone in favors lent, 

Virtuous by accident, 

Doubtful where I fain would rest, 

Frailest where I seem the best. 

Only strong for lack of test, — 

What am I, that I should press 

Special pleas of selfishness, 

Coolly mounting into heaven 

On my neighbor unforgiven ? 130 

Ne'er to me, howe'er disguised, 

Comes a saint unrecognized; 

Never fails my heart to greet 

Noble deed with warmer beat; 

Halt and maimed, I own not less 

All the grace of holiness; 

Nor, through shame or self-distrust. 

Less I love the pure and just. 

Lord, forgive these words of mine: 

What have I that is not Thine? 140 

Whatsoe'er I fain would boast 

Needs Thy pitying pardon most. 

Thou, O Elder Brother ! who 

In Thy flesh our trial knew. 

Thou, who hast been touched by these 

Our most sad infirmities, 

Thou alone the gulf canst span 

In the dual heart of man. 

And between the soul and sense 

Reconcile all difference. 150 

Change the dream of me and mine 

For the truth of Thee and Thine, 

And, through chaos, doubt, and strife, 

Interfuse Thy calm of life. 

Haply, thus by Thee renewed. 

In Thy borrowed goodness good, 

Some sweet morning yet in God's 

Dim, seonian periods, 

Joyful I shall wake to see 

Those I love who rest in Thee, 160 

And to them in Thee allied, 

Shall my soul be satisfied. 

Scarcely Hope hath shaped for me 

What the future life may be. 

Other lips may well be bold; 

Like the publican of old, 

T can only urge the plea, 

"Lord, be merciful to me !" 

Nothing of desert I claim. 

Unto me belongeth shame. 17° 

Not for me the crowns of gold. 

Palms, and harpings manifold; 



Not for erring eye and feet 

Jasper wall and golden street. 

What thou wilt, O Father, give ! 

All is gain that I receive. 

If my voice I may not raise 

In the elders' song of praise. 

If I may not. sin-defiled, 

Claim mv birthright as a child, 180 

Suffer it "that I to Thee 

As an hired servant be; 

Let the lowhest task be mine, 

Grateful, so the work be Thine; 

Let me find the humblest place 

In the shadow of Thy grace: 

Blest to me were any spot 

Where temptation whispers not. 

If there be some weaker one. 

Give me strength to help him on; 190 

If a blinder soul there be, 

Let me guide him nearer Thee. 

Make my mortal dreams come true 

With the work I fain would do; 

Clothe with life the weak intent, 

Let me be the thing I meant; 

liCt me find in Thy employ 

Peace that dearer is than joy; 

Out of self to love be led 

And to heaven acclimated, 200 

Until all things sweet and good 

Seem my natural habitude. 



So we read the prayer of him 
Who, with John of Lal)adie, 

Trod, of old, the oozy rim 
Of the Zuyder Zee. 

Thus did Andrew Rykman pray. 

Are we wiser, better grown, 
That we may not, in our day, 

Make his prayer our own ? j 



THE ANSWER 

Spare me, dread angel of reproof. 
And let the sunshine weave to-day 

Its gold-threads in the warp and woof 
Of life so poor and gray. 

Spare me awhile; the flesh is weak. 
These lingering feet, that fain would 
stray 
Among the flowers, shall some day 
seek 
The strait and narrow way. 



542 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Take off thy ever-watchful eye, 

The awe of thy rebuking frown; lo 

The dullest slave at times must sigh 
To fling his burdens down; 

To drop liis galley 's straining oar, 
And press, in summer warmth and 
calm, 

The lap of some enchanted shore 
Of blossom and of balm. 

Grudge not my life its hour of bloom, 
My heart its taste of long desire; 

This day be mine: be those to come 
As duty shall require. 20 

The deep voice answered to my own, 
Smiting my selfish prayers away; 

" To-morrow is with God alone, 
And man hath but to-day. 

" Say not, thy fond, vain heart within. 
The Father's arm shall still be wide, 

When from these pleasant ways of sin 
Thou turn'st at eventide. 

"'Cast thyself down,' the tempter 
saith, 

' And angels shall thy feet upbear. ' 30 
He bids thee make a lie of faith. 

And blasphemy of prayer. 

"Though God be good and free be 
heaven, 

No force divine can love compel; 
And, though the song of sins forgiven 

May sound through lowest hell, 

"The sweet persuasion of His voice 
Respects thy sanctity of will. 

He giveth day : thou hast thy choice 
To walk in darkness still; 40 

" As one who, turning from the light. 
Watches liis own gray shadow fall. 

Doubting, upon his path of night. 
If there be day at all ! 

" No word of doom may shut thee out. 
No wind of wrath may downward 
whirl. 

No swords of fire keep watch about 
The open gates of pearl; 

" A tenderer liglit than moon or sun. 
Than song of earth a sweeter hymn , 50 



May shine and sound forever on, 
And thou be deaf and dim. 

" Forever round the Mercy-seat 
The guiding lights of Love shall 
burn; 

But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
Shall lack the will to turn ? 

" What if thine eye refuse to see. 
Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome 
fail, 

And thou a willing captive be, 

Thyself thy own dark jail? 60 

" Oh, doom beyond the saddest guess, 
As the long years of God unroll, 

To make thy dreary selfishness 
The prison of a soul ! 

"To doubt the love that fain would 
break 
The fetters from thy self-bound 
limb; 
And dream that God can thee forsake 
As thou forsakest Him ! ' ' 



THE ETERNAL GOODNESS 

FRIENDS ! with whom my feet liave 

trod 
The quiet aisles of prayer. 
Glad witness to your zeal for God 
And love of man I bear. 

1 trace your lines of argument; 
Your logic linked and strong 

I weigh as one who dreads dissent. 
And fears a doubt as wrong. 

But still my human hands are weak 
To hold your iron creeds: 10 

Against the words ye bid me speak 
My heart within me pleads. 

Who fathoms the Eternal Thought ? 

Who talks of scheme and plan ? 
The Lord is God ! He needeth not 

The poor device of man. 

I walk with bare, hushed feet the 
ground 

Ye tread with boldness shod; 
T dare not fix with mete and bound 

The love and power of God. 20 



THE COMMON QUESTION 



543 



Ye praise His justice; even such 

His pitying love I deem: 
Ye seek a king; I fain would touch 

The robe that hath no seam. 

Ye see the curse which overbroods 

A world of pain and loss; 
I hear our Lord's beatitudes 

And prayer upon the cross. 

More than your schoolmen teach, 
within 

Myself, alas! I know: 30 

Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, 

Too small the merit show. 

I bow my forehead to the dust, 
I veil mine eyes for shame. 

And urge, in trembling self -distrust, 
A prayer without a claim. 

I see the wrong that round me lies, 

I feel the guilt within; 
I hear, with groan and travail-cries. 

The world confess its sin. 40 

Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 
And tossed by storm and flood, 

To one fixed trust my spirit chngs; 
I know that God is good ! 

Not mine to look where cherubim 

And seraphs may not see. 
But nothing can be good in Him 

Which evil is in me. 

The wrong that pains my soul below 
I dare not throne above, 50 

I know not of His hate, — I know 
His goodness and His love. 

I dimly guess from blessings known 

Of greater out of sight. 
And, with the chastened Psalmist, 
own 

His judgments too are right. 

I long for household voices gone, 
For vanished smiles I long. 

But God hath led my dear ones on. 
And He can do no wrong. 60 

I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 



And if my heart and flesh are weak 

To bear an untried pain. 
The bruised reed He wiU not break, 

But strengthen and sustain. 

No offering of my own I have, 

Nor works my faitli to prove; 70 

I can but give the gifts He gave. 
And plead His love for love. 

And so beside the Silent Sea 

I wait the muffled oar; 
No harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 

I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 

I only know I cannot drift 

Beyond His love and care. 80 

O brothers ! if my faith is vain, 
If hopes like these betray. 

Pray for me that my feet may gain 
The sure and safer way. 

And Thou, O Lord ! by whom are seen 

Thy creatures as they be. 
Forgive me if too close I lean 

My human heart on Thee ! 

THE COMMON QUESTION 

Behind us at our evening meal 

The gray bird ate liis fill, 
Swung downward by a single claw, 

And Aviped his hooked bill. 

He shook his wings and crimson tail, 

And set his head aslant. 
And, in his sharp, impatient way, 

Asked, " What does Charlie want ? " 

" Fie, silly bird ! " I -answered, " tuck 
Your head beneath your wing, 

And go to sleep;' ' — Init o'er and o'er 
He asked the self-same thing. 

Then, smiling, to myself I said: 

How like are men and birds! 
We all are saying what he says, 

In action or in words. 

« 
The boy with wlii]> antl top and drum, 

The girl with hoop and doll, 
And men with lands and houses, ask 

The question of Poor Poll. 



544 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



However full, with something more 
We fain the bag would cram; 

We sigh above our crowded nets 
For fish that never swam. 

No bounty of indulgent Heaven 
The vague desire can stay; 

Self-love is still a Tartar mill 
For grinding prayers alway. 

The dear God hears and pities all; 

He knoweth all our wants; 
And what we blindly ask of Him 

His love withholds or grants. 

And so I sometimes think our prayers 
Might well be merged in one; 

And nest and perch and hearth and 
church 
Repeat, " Thy will be done." 



OUR MASTER 

Immortal Ijove, forever full, 

Forever flowing free, 
Forever shared, forever whole, 

A never-ebbing sea ! 

Our outward lips confess the name 

All other names above; 
Love only knoweth whence it came 

And comprehendeth love. 

Blow, winds of God, awake and blow 
The mists of earth away ! lo 

Shine out, O Light Divine, and show 
How wide and far we stray ! 

Hush every lip, close every book. 
The strife of tongues forbear; 

Why forward reach, or backward look. 
For love that elasps like air ? 

We may not climb the heavenly steeps 
To bring the Lord Clirist down: 

In vain we search the lowest deeps. 
For Him no depths can drown. 20 

Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape. 

The lineaments restore 
Of Him we know in outward shape 

And in the flesh no more. 

He Cometh not a king to reign; 
The world's long hope is dim; 



The weary centuries watch in vain 
The clouds of heaven for Him. 

Death comes, life goes; the asking 
eye 

And ear are answerless; 30 

The grave is dumb, the hollow sky 

Is sad with silentness. 

The letter fails, and systems fall, 

And every symbol wanes; 
The Spirit over-brooding all 

Eternal Love remains. 

And not for signs in heaven above 

Or earth below they look, 
Who know with John His smile of 
love 

With Peter His rebuke. 40 

In joy of inward peace, or sense 

Of sorrow over sin. 
He is His own best evidence, 

His witness is within. 

No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
Nor dream of bards and seers, 

No dead fact stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years; — 

But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
A present help is He; 50 

And faith has still its Olivet, 
And love its Galilee. 

The healing of His seamless dress 

Is by our beds of pain; 
We touch Him in life's throng and 
press. 

And we are whole again. 

Through Him the first fond prayers 
are said 

Our lips of childhood frame, 
The last low whispers of our dead 

Are burdened with His name. 60 

Our Lord and Master of us all ! 

Whate'er our name or sign. 
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, 

We test our lives by Thine. 

Thou judgest us; Thy purity 
Doth all our lusts condemn; 

The love that draws us nearer Thee 
Is hot with wrath to them. 



OUR MASTER 



545 



Our thoughts He open to Thy sight; 

And, naked to Thy glance, 70 

Our secret sins are in the hght 

Of Thy pure countenance. 

Thy healing pains, a keen distress 
Thy tender light shines in; 

Thy sweetness is the bitterness, 
Thy grace the pang of sin. 

Yet, weak and blinded though we 
be, 

Thou dost our service own; 
We bring our varying gifts to Thee, 

And Thou rejectest none. 80 

To Thee our full humanity. 
Its joys and pains, belong; 

The wrong of man to man on Thee 
Inflicts a deeper wrong. 

Who hates, hates Thee, who loves be- 
comes 

Therein to Thee allied; 
All sweet accords of hearts and homes 

In Thee are multiplied. 

Deep strike Thy roots, O heavenly 
Vine, 

Within our earthly sod, 90 

Most human and yet most divine, 

The flower of man and God ! 

Love ! O Life ! Our faith and sight 
Thy presence maketh one, 

As through transfigured clouds of 
white 
We trace the noon-day sun. 

So, to our mortal eyes subdued, 
Flesh-veiled, but not concealed. 

We know in Thee the fatherhood 
And heart of God revealed. 100 

We faintly hear, we dimly see, 
In differing phrase we pray ; 

But, dim or clear, we own in Thee 
The Light, the Truth, the Way ! 

The homage that we render Thee 

Is still our Father's own ; 
No jealous claim or rivalry 

Divides the Cross and Throne. 

To do Thy will is more than praise, 
As words are less than deeds, no 



And simple trust can find Thy ways 
We miss with chart of creeds. 

No pride of self Thy service hath, 
No place for me and mine; 

Our human strength is weakness, 
death 
Our life, apart from Thine. 

Apart from Thee all gain is loss. 

All labor vainly done; 
The solemn shadow of Thy Cross 

Is better than the sun. 120 

Alone, O Love ineffable ! 

Thy saving name is given; 
To turn aside from Thee is hell. 

To walk with Thee is heaven ! 

How vain, secure in all Thou art, 

Our noisy championship ! 
The sighing of the contrite heart 

Is more than flattering lip. 

Not Thine the bigot's partial plea. 
Nor Thine the zealot's ban; 130 

Thou well canst spare a love of 
Thee 
Which ends in hate of man. 

Our Friend, our Brother, and our 
Lord, 

What may Thy service be ? — 
Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 

But simply following Thee. 

We bring no ghastly holocaust. 

We pile no graven stone; 
He serves thee best who loveth most 

His brothers and Thy own. 140 

Thy litanies, sweet offices 

Of love and gratitude; 
Thy sacramental liturgies . 

The joy of doing good. 

In vain shall waves of incense drift 

The vaulted nave around, 
In vain the minster turret lift 

Its brazen weights of sound. 

The heart must ring Thv Christmas 
bells, 

Thy inward altars raise; 150 

Its faith and hope Thy canticles. 

And its obedience praise ! 



546 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



THE MEETING 

The elder folks shook hands at last, 
Down seat by seat the signal passed. 
To simple ways like ours unused, 
Half solemnized and half amused, 
With long-drawn breath and shrug, 

my guest 
His sense of glad relief expressed. 
Outside, the hills lay warm in sun; 
The cattle in the meadow-run 
Stood half-leg deep: a single bird 
The green repose above us stirred, lo 
" What part or lot have you,'' he said, 
"In these dull rites of drowsy-head? 
Is silence worship ? Seek it where 
It soothes with dreams the summer 

air, 
Not in this close and rude-benched 

hall, 
But where soft lights and shadows 

fall. 
And all the slow, sleep-walking hours 
Glide soundless over grass and flow- 
ers! 
From time and place and form apart. 
Its holy ground the human heart, 20 
Nor ritual-bound nor templeward 
Walks the free spirit of the Lord ! 
Our common Master did not pen 
His followers up from other men; 
His- service liberty indeed, 
He built no church, He framed no 

creed; 
But while the saintly Pharisee 
Made broader his phylactery. 
As from the synagogue was seen 
The dusty-sandalled Nazarene 30 

Through ripening cornfields lead the 

way 
Upon the awful Sabbath day, 
His sermons were the healthful talk 
That shorter made the mountain- walk. 
His wayside texts were flowers and 

birds, 
Where mingled with His gracious 

words 
The rustle of the tamarisk-tree 
And ripple- wash of Galilee." 

" Thy words are well, O friend," I said; 
" Unmeasured and unlimited, 40 

With noiseless slide of stone to stone, 
The mystic Church of God has grown. 
Invisible and silent stands 
The temple never made with hands, 



Unheard the voices still and small 
Of its unseen confessional. 
He needs no special place of prayer 
Whose hearing ear is everywhere; 
He brings not back the cliildish days 
That ringed the earth with stones of 
praise, 50 

Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid 
The plinths of Philsp's colonnade. 
Still less He owns the selfish good 
And sickly growth of solitude, — 
The worthless grace that, out of sight, 
Flowers in the desert anchorite; 
Dissevered from the suffering whole, 
Love hath no power to save a soul. 
Not out of Self, the origin. 
And native air and soil of sin, 60 

The living waters spring and flow, 
The trees with leaves of healing grow. 

"Dream not, O friend, because I seek 
This quiet shelter twice a week, 
I better deem its pine-laid floor 
Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore; 
But nature is not solitude: 
She crowds us with her thronging 

wood; 
Her many hands reach out to us. 
Her many tongues are garrulous; 70 
Perpetual riddles of surprise 
She offers to our ears and eyes; 
She will not leave our senses still, 
But drags them captive at her will : 
And, making earth too great for hea- 
ven, 
She hides the Giver in the given. 

" And so I find it well to come 
For deeper rest to this still room. 
For here the habit of the soul 
Feels less the outer world's control; 80 
The strength of mutual purpose pleads 
More earnestly our common needs; 
And from the silence multiplied 
By these still forms on either side, 
The world that time and sense have 

known 
Falls off and leaves us God alone. 

" Yet rarely through the charmed re- 
pose 
Unmixed the stream of motive flows, 
A flavor of its many springs. 
The tints of earth and sky it brings; 90 
In the still waters needs must be 
Some shade of human sympathy; 



THE MEETING 



547 



And here, in its accustomed place, 
I look on memory's dearest face; 
The blind by-sitter guesseth not 
What shadow haunts that vacant 

spot; 
No eyes save mine alone can see 
The love wherewith it welcomes me ! 
And still, with those alone my kin, 
In doubt and weakness, want and 

sin, 100 

I bow my head, my heart I bare, 
As when that face was living there, 
And strive (too oft, alas ! in vain) 
The peace of simple trust to gain, 
Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay 
The idols of my heart away. 

"Welcome the silence all unbroken. 
Nor less the words of fitness spoken, — 
Such golden words as hers for whom 
Our autumn flowers have just made 

room ; no 

Whose hopeful utterance through and 

through 
The freshness of the morning blew; 
Who loved not less the earth that 

light 
Fell on it from the heavens in sight, 
But saw in all fair forms more fair 
The Eternal beauty mirrored there. 
Whose eighty years but added grace 
And saintlier meaning to her face, — 
The look of one who bore awav 
Glad tidings from the hills of day, 120 
While all our hearts went forth to 

meet 
The coming of her beautiful feet ! 
Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread 
Is in the paths where Jesus led; 
Who dreams her childhood's sabbath 

dream 
By Jordan's willow-shaded stream. 
And. of the hymns of hope and faith, 
Sung by the monks of Nazareth, 
Hears pious echoes, in the call 
To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall, 
Repeating where His works were 

wrought 1 3 1 

The lesson that her Master taught, 
Of whom an elder Sibyl gave. 
The prophecies of Cumtc's cave ! 

'■' I ask no organ's soulless breath 
To drone the themes of life and death, 
No altar candle-lit by day, 
No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play, 



No cool philosophy to teach 
Its l)land audacities of speech 140 

To double-tasked idolaters 
Themselves their gods and worship- 
pers, 
No pulpit hammered by the fist 
Of loud-asserting dogmatist. 
Who borrows for the Hand of love 
The smoking thunderbolts of Jove. 
I know how well the fathers taught, 
What work the later schoolmen 

wrought; 
I reverence old-time faith and men, 
But God is near us now as then; 150 
His force of love is still unspent, 
His hate of sin as innninent; 
And still the measure of our needs 
Outgrows the cramping bounds of 

creeds; 
The manna gathered yesterday 
Already savors of decay; 
Doubts to the world's child-heart un- 
known 
Question us now from star and stone; 
Too little or too nmch wc know, 
And sight is swift and faith is slow; 160 
The power is lost to self -deceive 
With shallow forms of make-believe. 
We walk at high noon, and the 

bells 
Call to a thousand oracles, 
But the sound deafens, and the liglit 
Is stronger than our dazzled sight; 
The letters of the sacred Book 
Glimmer and swim beneath our look; 
Still struggles in the Age's breast 
With deepening agony of quest 170 
The old entreaty : ' Art thou He, 
Or look we for the Christ to be ? ' 

"God should be most where man is 

least : 
So, where is neither church nor priest. 
And never rag of form or creed 
To clothe the nakedness of need, — 
Where farmer-folk in silence meet, — 
I turn my bell-unsunimoned feet; 
I lay the critic's glass aside, 
I tread upon my lettered pride, 180 
And, lowest-seated, testify 
To the oneness of humanity; 
Confess the universal want. 
And share whatever Heaven may 

grant. 
He findeth not who seeks his own, 
The soul is lost that's saved alone. 



548 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Not on one favored forehead fell 

Of old the fire-tongued miracle, 

But flunied o'er all the thronging 

host 
The baptism of the Holy Ghost; 190 
Heart answers heart; in one desire 
The blending lines of prayer aspire; 
' Where, in my name, meet two or 

three,' 
Our Lord hath said, ' I there will be ! ' 

"So sometimes comes to soul and 

sense 
The feehng which is evidence 
That very near about us lies 
The realm of spiritual mysteries. 
The sphere of the supernal powers 
Impinges on this world of ours. 200 
The low and dark horizon hfts, 
To light the scenic terror shifts; 
The breath of a diviner air 
Blows down the answer of a prayer: 
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt 
A great compassion clasps about, 
And law and goodness, love and force, 
Are wedded fast beyond divorce. 
Then duty leaves to love its task, 
The beggar Self forgets to ask; 210 
With smile of trust and folded hands, 
The passive soul in waiting stands, 
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew. 
The One true Life its own renew. 

" So to the calmly gathered thought 
The innermost of truth is taught, 
The mystery dimly understood, 
That love of God is love of good. 
And, chiefly, its divinest trace 
In Him of Nazareth's holy face; 220 
That to be saved is only this, — 
Salvation from our selfishness, 
From more than elemental fire, 
The soul's unsanctified desire, 
From sin itself, and not the pain 
That warns us of its chafing chain; 
That worship's deeper meaning lies 
In mercy, and not sacrifice. 
Not proud humilities of sense 
And posturing of penitence, 230 

But love's unforced obedience; 
That Book and Church and Day are 

given 
For man, not God, — for earth, not 

heaven, — 
The V)lessed means to holiest ends, 
Not masters, but benignant friends; 



That the dear Christ dwells not afar. 
The king of some remoter star, 
Listening, at times, with flattered ear 
To homage wrung from selfish fear, 239 
But here, amidst the poor and blind. 
The bound and suffering of our kind. 
In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
Life of our life, He lives to-day." 



THE CLEAR VISION 

I DID but dream. I never knew 
What charms our sternest season 
wore. 
Was never yet the sky so blue, 

Was never earth so white before. 
Till now I never saw the glow 
Of sunset on yon hills of snow, 
And never learned the bough's designs 
Of beauty in its leafless lines. 

Did ever such a morning break 

As that my eastern windows see ? lo 
Did ever such a moonlight take 
Weird photographs of shrub and 
tree? 
Rang ever bells so wild and fleet 
The music of the winter street ? 
Was ever yet a sound by half 
So merry as yon school-boy's laugh ? 

O Earth ! with gladness overfraught. 
No added charm thy face hath 

found; 
Within my heart the change is 

wrought, 
My footsteps make enchanted 

ground. 20 

From couch of pain and curtained 

room 
Forth to thy light and air I come. 
To find in all that meets my eyes 
The freshness of a glad surprise. 

Fair seem these winter days, and soon 
Shall blow the warm west-winds of 

spring. 
To set the unbound rills in tune 
And hither urge the bluebird's 

wing. 
The vales shall laugh in flowers, the 

woods 
Grow misty green with leafing buds, 30 
And violets and wind-flowers sway 
Against the throbbing heart of May. 



THE CLEAR VISION 



549 




" I never knew 
What charms our sternest season wore " 



Break forth, my lips, in praise, and 
own 
The wiser love severely kind; 
Since, richer for its chastening grown, 

I see, whereas I once was blind. 
The world, O Father! hath not 

wronged 
With loss the life by Thee pro- 
longed; 
But still, with every added year, 
More beautiful Thy works appear ! 40 



As Thou hast made thy world without, 
Make Thou more fair my world 
witliin; 
Shine through its lingering clouds of 
doubt; 
Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin; 
Fill, brief or long, my granted span 
Of life with love to thee and man; 
Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest, 
But let my last days be my best I 
2d mo.. 1868. 



550 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



DIVINE COMPASSION 

Long since, a dream of heaven I 
had, 
And still the vision haunts me oft; 
I see the saints in white robes clad, 

The martyrs with their palms aloft; 
But hearing still, in middle song. 

The ceaseless dissonance of wrong; 
And shrinking, with hid faces, from 

the strain 
Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of re- 
morse and pain. 

The glad song falters to a wail, 
The harping sinks to low lament; 

Before the still unhfted veil 

I see the crowned foreheads bent, 

Making more sweet the heavenly air 
With breathings of unselfish prayer; 

And a Voice saith: ' O Pity which is 
pain, 

O Love that weeps, fill up my suffer- 
ings which remain ! 

" Shall souls redeemed by me refuse 

To share my sorrow in their turn ? 
Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse 

Of peace with selfish unconcern ? 
Has saintly ease no pitying care ? 
Has faith no work, and love no 
prayer ? 
While sin remains, and souls in dark- 
ness dwell, 
Can heaven itself be heaven, and look 
unmoved on hell?" 

Then through the Gates of Pain, I 
dream, 
A wind of heaven blows coolly in; 
Fainter the awful discords seem. 
The smoke of torment grows more 
thin. 
Tears quench the burning soil, and 
thence 
Spring sweet, pale flowers of peni- 
tence : 
And through the dreary realm of 

man's despair. 
Star-crowned an angel walks, and lo ! 
God's hope is there I 

Is it a dream ? Is heaven so high 
Tliat pity cannot breathe its air ? 

Its happy eyes forever dry, 
Its holy lips without a prayer ! 



My God ! my God ! if thither led 

By Thy free grace unmerited. 
No crown nor palm be mine, but let 

me keep 
A heart that still can feel, and eyes 

that still can weep. 



THE PRAYER-SEEKER 

Along the aisle where prayer was 

made, 
A woman, all in black arrayed. 
Close-veiled , between the kneeling host, 
With gliding motion of a ghost. 
Passed to the desk, and laid thereon 
A scroll which bore these words alone, 
Pray for me ! 

Back from the place of worshipping 
She glided like a guilty thing: 
The rustle of her draperies, stirred lo 
By hurrying feet, alone was heard; 
While, full of awe, the preacher read, 
As out into the dark she sped: 
Pray for me ! 

Back to the night from whence she came, 
To unimagined grief or shame ! 
Across the threshold of that door 
None knew the burden that she bore; 
Alone she left the written scroll, 
The legend of a troubled soul, — 20 
Pray for me ! 

Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin ! 
Thou leav'st a common need within; 
Each bears, like thee, some nameless 

weight. 
Some misery inarticulate. 
Some secret sin, some shrouded dread, 
Some household sorrow all unsaid. 
Pray for us ! 

Pass on ! The type of all thou art. 
Sad witness to the common heart ! 30 
With face in veil and seal on lip. 
In mute and strange companionship. 
Like thee we wander to and fro. 
Dumbly imploring as we go: 
Pray for us ! 

Ah, who shall pray, since he who 

pleads 
Our want perchance hath greater 

needs ? 



THE BREWING OF SOMA 



551 



Yet they who make their loss the gain 
Of others shall not ask in vain, 
And Heaven bends low to hear the 
prayer 40 

Of love from lips of self-despair: 
Pray for us ! 

In vain remorse and fear and hate 
Beat with bruised hands against a fate 
Whose walls of iron only move 
And open to the touch of love. 
He only feels his burdens fall 
Who, taught by suffering, pities all. 
Pray for us ! 

He prayeth best who leaves unguessed 
The mystery of another's breast. si 
Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'er- 

flow, 
Or heads are white, thou need'st not 

know. 
Enough to note by many a sign 
That every heart hath needs like 

thine. 

Pray for us ! 



THE BREWING OF SOMA 

"These libations mixed with milk have 
been prepared for Indra : offer Soma to the 
drinker of Soma." — Vashista, translated 
by Max Muller. 

The fagots blazed, the caldron's 
smoke 

Up through the green wood curled; 
" Bring honey from the hollow oak, 
Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke, 

In the childhood of the world. 

And brewed they well or brewed they 

ill 
The priests thrust in their rods, 
First tasted, and then drank their 

fill. 
And shouted, with one voice and 
will, 
" Behold the drink of gods ! " 10 

They drank, and lo! in heart and 
brain 

A new, glad Ufe began; 
The gray of hair grew young agam, 
The sick man laughed away his pam, 

The cripple leaped and ran. 



" Drink, mortals, what the gods have 
sent, 

Forget your long annoy." 
So sang the priests. From tent to tent 
The Soma's sacred madness went, 

A storm of drunken joy. ao 

Then knew each rapt inebriate 
A winged and glorious birth, 
Soared upward, with strange joy elate, 
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate. 
And, sobered, sank to earth. 



The land with Soma's praises rang; 

On Gihon's banks of shade 
Its hymns the dusky maidens sang; 
In joy of life or mortal pang 

All men to Soma prayed. 30 

The morning twilight of the race 

Sends down these matin psalms; 
And still with wondering eyes we trace 
The simple prayers to Soma's grace, 
That Vedic verse embalms. 

As in that child-world's early year, 

Each after age has striven 
By music, incense, vigils drear. 
And trance, to bring the skies more 
near, 
Or lift men up to heaven ! 40 

Some fever of the blood and brain, 

Some self-exalting spell, 
The scourger's keen delight of pain, 
The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain, 

The wild-haired Bacchant's yell, — 



The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk 

The saner brute below; 
The naked Santon, haschish-drunk, 
The cloister madness of the monk, 

The fakir's torture-show 1 



so 



And yet the past comes round again, 

And new doth old fulfil; 
In sensual transports wild as vain 
We brew in many a Ciiristian fane 

The heathen Soma still ! 

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, 

Forgive our foolish wavsl 
Reclothe us in our rightful mind. 
In purer lives Thy service find, 

In deeper reverence, praise. 60 



552 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



In simple trust like theirs who heard 

Beside the Syrian sea 
The gracious calling of the Lord, 
Let us, like them, without a word, 

Rise up and follow Thee. 

O Sabbath rest by Galilee ! 

O calm of hills above, 
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee 
The silence of eternity 

Interpreted by love ! 70 

With that deep hush subduing all 

Our words and works that drown 
The tender whisper of Thy call, 
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall 
As fell Thy manna down. 

Drop Thy still dews of quietness, 
Till all our strivings cease; 

Take from our souls the strain and 
stress, 

And let our ordered lives confess 
The beauty of Thy peace. So 

Breathe through the heats of our de- 
sire 
Thy coolness and Thy balm; 
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; 
Speak through the earthquake, wind, 
and fire, 
O still, small voice of calm ! 



A WOMAN 

Oh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained 

with ill. 
Behold ! thou art a woman still ! 
And, by that sacred name and dear, 
I bid thy better self appear. 
Still, through thy foul disguise, I see 
The rudimental purity. 
That, spite of change and loss, makes 

good 
Thy birthright-claim of womanhood; 
An inward loathing, deep, intense; 
A shame that is half innocence. 
Cast off the grave-clothes of thy 

sin ! 
Rise from the dust thou liest in, 
As Mary rose at Jesus' word, 
Redeemed and white before the Lord ! 
Reclaim thy lost soul ! In His name 
Rise up, and break thy bonds of 

shame. 



Art weak ? He 's strong. Art fearful ? 
Hear 

The world's O'ercomer; " Be of cheer ! 

What lip shall judge when he ap- 
proves ? 

Who dare to scorn the child He loves ? 



THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ 

On the isle of Penikese, 
Ringed about by sapphire seas. 
Fanned by breezes salt and cool, 
Stood the Master with his school. 
Over sails that not in vain 
Wooed the west-wind's steady strain, 
Line of coast that low and far 
Stretched its undulating bar. 
Wings aslant across the rim 
Of the waves they stooped to skim, 10 
Rock and isle and glistening bay. 
Fell the beautiful white day. 

Said the Master to the youth: 

" We have come in search of truth, 

Trying with uncertain key 

Door by door of mystery; 

We are reaching, through His laws, 

To the garment-hem of Cause, 

Him, the endless, unbegun. 

The Unnamable, the One 20 

Light of all our light the Source, 

Life of life, and Iiorce of force. 

As with fingers of the blind, 

We are groping here to find 

What the hieroglyphics mean 

Of the Unseen in the seen. 

What the Thought which underlies 

Nature's masking and disguise. 

What it is that hides beneath 

Blight and bloom and birth and death. 

By past efforts unavailing, 31 

Doubt and error, loss and failing, 

Of our weakness made aware. 

On the threshold of our task 

Let us light and guidance ask. 

Let us pause in silent prayer ! " 

Then the Master in his place 
Bowed his head a little space. 
And the leaves by soft airs stirred. 
Lapse of wave and cry of bird, 40 

Left the solemn hush unbroken 
Of that wordless prayer unspoken. 
While its wish, on earth unsaid. 
Rose to heaven interpreted. 



THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ 



553 




Agassiz 



As, in life's best hours, we hear 
By the spirit's finer ear 
His low voice within us, thus 
The All-Father heareth us; 
And His holy ear we pain 
With our noisy words and vain. 
Not for Him our violence 
Storming at the gates of sense, 
His the primal language, His 
The eternal silences ! 

Even the careless heart was moved, 
And the doubting gave assent, 
With a gesture reverent, 
To the Master well-beloved. 
As thin mists are glorified 
By the light they cannot hide, 
All who gazed upon him saw, 
Through its veil of tender awe, 
How his face was still uplit 
By the old sweet look of it, 
Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer, 
And the love that casts out fear. 
Who the secret may declare 
Of that brief, unuttered prayer ? 



so 



60 



Did the shade before him come 
Of th' inevitable doom, 70 

Of the end of earth so near, 
And Eternity's new year? 

In the lap of slieltering seas 
Rests the isle of Penikese; 
But the lord of the domain 
Comes not to his own again : 
Where the eyes that follow fail, 
On a vaster sea his sail 
Drifts beyond our beck and hail. 
Other lips witliin its bound «o 

Shall the laws of Hfe expound; 
Other eyes from rock and shell 
Read the world's old riddles well: 
But when breezes light and bland 
Blow from Summer's blossomed land. 
When the air is glad with wings, 
And the blithe song-sparrow sings, 
Many an eye with his still face 
Shall the living ones displace, 
Many an ear the word shall seek 00 
He alone could fitly speak. 
And one name forevermore 



554 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Shall be uttered o'er and o'er 
By the waves that kiss the shore, 
By the curlew's whistle sent 
Down the cool, sea-scented air; 
In all voices known to her. 
Nature owns her worshipper, 
Half in triumph, half lament. 
Thither Love shall tearful turn, 
Friendship pause uncovered there. 
And the wisest reverence learn 
From the Master's silent prayer. 



IN QUEST 

Have I not voyaged, friend beloved, 

with thee 
On the great waters of the unsounded 

sea, 
Momently listening with suspended oar 
For the low rote of waves upon a shore 
Changeless as heaven, where never 

fog-cloud drifts 
Over its windless wood, nor mirage 

lifts 
The steadfast hills; where never birds 

of doubt 
Sing to mislead, and every dream dies 

out. 
And the dark riddles which perplex us 

here 
In the sharp solvent of its light are 

clear ? i o 

Thou knowest how vain our quest; 

how, soon or late. 
The baffling tides and circles of debate 
Swept back our bark unto its starting- 
place, 
Where, looking forth upon the blank, 

gray space, 
And round about us seeing, with sad 

eyes. 
The same old difficult hills and cloud- 
cold skies. 
We said; " This outward search avail- 

eth not 
To find Him. He is farther than we 

thought, 
Or, haply, nearer. To this very spot 
Whereon we wait, this commonplace 

of home, 20 

As to the well of Jacob, He may come 
And tell us all things." As I listened 

there. 
Through the expectant silences of 

prayer, 



Somewhat I seemed to hear, which 

hath to me 
Been hope, strength, comfort, and I 

give it thee. 

" The riddle of the world is understood 

Only by him who feels that God is 
good. 

As only he can feel who makes his 
love 

The ladder of his faith, and climbs 
above 

On th' rounds of his best instincts; 
draws no line 30 

Between mere human goodness and 
divine. 

But, judging God by what in him is 
best. 

With a child's trust leans on a Fa- 
ther's breast, 

And hears unmoved the old creeds 
babble still 

Of kingly power and dread caprice of 
win. 

Chary of blessing, prodigal of curse, 

The pitiless doomsman of the uni- 
verse. 

Can Hatred ask for love ? Can Selfish- 
ness 

Invite to self-denial ? Is He less 

Than man in kindly dealing ? Can He 
break 40 

His own great law of fatherhood, for- 
sake 

And curse His children? Not for 
earth and heaven 

Can separate tables of the law be 
given. 

No rule can bind which He himself 
denies; 

The truths of time are not eternal lies." 

So heard I; and the chaos round me 

spread 
To light and order grew; and, " Lord," 

I said, 
" Our sins are our tormentors, worst of 

all 
Felt in distrustful shame that dares 

not call 
Upon Thee as our Father. We have 

set so 

A strange god up, but Thou remainest 

yet. 
All that I feel of pity Thou hast known 
Before I was; my best is all Thy own. 



THE FRIEND'S BURIAL 



555 



From Thy great heart of goodness 

mine but drew 
Wishes and prayers; but Thou, O 

Lord, wilt do. 
In Thy own time, by ways I cannot 

see. 
All that I feel when I am nearest 

Thee!" 

THE FRIEND'S BURIAL 

My thoughts are all in yonder town, 
Where, wept l:ty many tears. 

To-day my mother's friend lays down 
The burden of her years. 

True as in life, no poor disguise 

Of death with her is seen, 
And on her simple casket lies 

No wreath of bloom and green. 

Oh, not for her the florist's art, 

The mocking weeds of woe; lo 

Dear memories in each mourner's 
heart 
Like heaven's white lilies blow. 

And all about the softening air 
Of new-born sweetness tells. 

And the ungathered May-flowers wear 
The tints of ocean shells. 

The old, assuring miracle 

Is fresh as heretofore; 
And earth takes up its parable 

Of life from death once more. 20 

Here organ-swell and church-bell toll 
Methinks but discord were; 

The prayerful silence of the soul 
Is best befitting her. 

No sound should break the quietude 

Alike of earth and sky; 
O wandering wind in Seabrook wood. 

Breathe but a half -heard sigh ! 

Sing softly, spring-bird, for her sake; 

And thou not distant sea, 30 

Lapse lightly as if Jesus spake, 

And thou wert Galilee ! 

For all her quiet life flowed on 
As meadow streamlets flow. 

Where fresher green reveals alone 
The noiseless ways they go. 



From her loved place of prayer I see 
The plain-robed mourners pass, 

With slow feet treading reverently 
The graveyard's springing grass. 40 

Make room, O mourning ones, for me. 
Where, like the friends of Paul, 

That you no more her face shall see 
You sorrow most of all. 

Her path shall brighten more and 
more 

Unto the perfect day; 
She cannot fail of peace who bore 

Such peace with her away. 

O sweet, calm face that seemed to 
wear 

The look of sins forgiven ! so 

O voice of prayer that seemed to bear 

Our own needs up to heaven ! 

How reverent in our midst she stood. 
Or knelt in grateful praise ! 

What grace of Christian womanhood 
Was in her household ways ! 

For still her holy living meant 

No duty left undone; 
The heavenly and the human blent 

Their kindred loves in one. 60 

And if her life small leisure found 

For feasting ear and eye, 
And Pleasure, on her daily round, 

She passed unpausing by. 

Yet with her went a secret sense 
Of all things sweet and fair. 

And Beauty's gracious providence 
Refreshed her unaware. 

She kept her line of rectitude 

With love's unconscious ease; 70 

Her kindly instincts understood 
All gentle courtesies. 

An inborn charm of graciousness 
Made sweet her smile and tone, 

And glorified her farm-wife dress 
With beauty not its own. 

The dear Lord's best interpreters 

Are humble human souls; 
The Gospel of a life like hers 

Is more than books or scrolls. 80 



556 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



From scheme and creed the hght goes 


Hark ! joining in chorus 


out, 


The heavens bend o'er us ! 


The saintly fact survives; 


The dark night is ending and dawn 


The blessed Master none can doubt 


has begun; 


Revealed in holy lives. 


Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the 




sun. 
All speech flow to music, all hearts 


A CHRISTMAS CARMEN 


beat as one ! 


I 


VESTA 


Sound over all waters, reach out from 




all lands, 


Christ of God ! • whose life and 


The chorus of voices, the clasping of 


death 


hands; 


Our own have reconciled, 


Sing hymns that were sung by the stars 


Most quietly, most tenderly 


of the morn. 


Take home Thy star-named child! 


Sing songs of the angels when Jesus 




was born ! 


Thy grace is in her patient eyes. 


With glad jubilations 


Thy words are on her tongue; 


Bring liope to the nations ! 


The very silence round her seems 


The dark night is ending and dawn has 


As if the angels sung. 


begun: 




Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the 


Her smile is as a listening child's 


sun. 


Who hears its mother call; 


All speech flow to music, all hearts 


The lilies of Thy perfect peace 


beat as one ! 


About her pillow fall. 


II 


She leans from out our clinging arms 




To rest herself in Thine; 


Sing the bridal of nations ! with cho- 


Alone to Thee, dear Lord, can we 


rals of love 


Our well-beloved resign ! 


Sing out the war-vulture and sing in 




the dove. 


Oh, less for her than for ourselves 


Till the hearts of the peoples keep 


We bow our heads and pray; 


time in accord, 


Her setting star, like Bethlehem's, 


And the voice of the world is the voice 


To Thee shall point the way ! 


of the Lord ! 




Clasp hands of the nations 




In strong gratulations : 


CHILD-SONGS 


The dark night is ending and dawn has 




begun; 


Still linger in our noon of time 


Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun. 


And on our Saxon tongue 


All speech flow to music, all hearts 


The echoes of the home-born hymns 


beat as one ! 


The Aryan mothers sung. 


Ill 


And childhood had its litanies 




In every age and clime; 


Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of 


The earliest cradles of the race 


peace ; 


Were rocked to poet's rhyme. 


East, west, north, and south let the 




long quarrel cease: 


Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor 


Sing the song of great joy that the 


flower. 


angels began, 


Nor green earth's virgin sod, lo 


Sing of glory to God and of good-will 


So moved the singer's heart of old 


to man ! 


As these small ones of God. 



THE TWO ANGELS 



557 



The mystery of unfolding life 
Was more than dawning morn, 

Than opening flower or crescent moon 
The human soul new-born ! 

And still to childhood's sweet appeal 
The heart of genius turns. 

And more than all the sages teach 
From lisping voices learns, — 20 

The voices loved of him who sang, 
Where Tweed and Teviot glide, 

That sound to-day on all the winds 
That blow from Rydal-side, — 

Heard in the Teuton's household 
songs, 

And folk-lore of the Finn, 
Where'er to holy Christmas hearths 

The Christ-child enters in ! 

Before life's sweetest mystery still 
The heart in reverence kneels; 30 

The wonder of the primal birth 
The latest mother feels. 

We need love's tender lessons taught 

As only weakness can; 
God hath His small interpreters; 

The child must teach the man. 

We wander wide through evil years, 
Our eyes of faith grow dim; 

But he is freshest from His hands 
And nearest unto Him ! 40 

And haply, pleading long with Him 
For sin-sick hearts and cold. 

The angels of our childhood still 
The Father's face behold. 

Of such the kingdom 1 — Teach Thou 
us, 

O Master most divine. 
To feel the deep significance 

Of these wise words of Thine ! 

The haughty eye shall seek in vain 
What innocence beholds; so 

No cunning finds the key of heaven, 
No strength its gate unfolds. 

Alone to guilelessness and love 

That gate shall open fall; 
The mind of pride is nothingness. 

The childlike heart is all ! 



THE TWO ANGELS 

God called the nearest angels who 
dwell with Him above: 

The tenderest one was Pity, the dear- 
est one was Love. 

" Arise," He said, "' my angels ! a wail 

of woe and sin 
Steals through the gates of heaven, 

and saddens all within. 

" My harps take up the mournful strain 
that from a lost world swells, 

The smoke of torment clouds the light 
and blights the asphodels. 

" Fly downward to that under world, 
and on its souls of pain 

Let Love drop smiles like sunshine, 
and Pity tears like rain ! " 

Two faces bowed before the Throne, 
veiled in their golden hair; 

Four white wings lessened swiftly 
down the dark abyss of air. 

The way was strange, the flight was 
long; at last the angels came 

Where swung the lost and nether world, 
red-wrapped in ray less flame. 

There Pity, shuddering, wept ; but Love, 
with faith too strong for fear, 

Took heart from God's almightiness 
and smiled a smile of cheer. 

And lo! that tear of Pity quenched 
the flame whereon it fell. 

And, with the sunshine of that smile, 
hope entered into hell ! 

Two unveiled faces full of joy looked 
upward to the Throne, 

Four white wings folded at the feet of 
Him who sat thereon ! 

And deeper than the sound of seas, 
more soft than falling flake, 

Amidst the hush of wing and song the 
Voice Eternal spake: 

"Welcome, my angels! ye have 
brought a holier joy to heaven; 

Henceforth its sweetest song shall be 
the song of sin forgiven ! " 



558 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 




" So stood of old the holy Christ 
Amidst the suffering tliroug " 



THE HEALER 

TO A YOUNG PHYSICIAN, WITH DORE's 
PICTURE OF CHRIST HEALING THE SICK 

So stood of old the holy Christ 
Amidst the suffering throng; 

With whom His lightest touch sufficed 
To make the weakest strong. 

That healing gift He lends to them 

Who use it in His name; 
The power that filled His garment's hem 

Is evermore the same. 

For lo ! in human hearts unseen 

The Healer dwelleth still, 
And they who make His temples clean 

The best subserve His will. 

The holiest task by Heaven decreed. 
An errand all divine, 



The burden of our common need 
To render less is thine. 

The paths of pain are thine. Go forth 
With patience, trust, and hope; 

The sufferings of a sin-sick earth 
Shall give thee ample scope. 

Beside the unveiled mysteries 
Of life and death go stand. 

With guarded lips and reverent eyes 
And pure of heart and hand. 

So shalt thou be with power endued 
From Him who went about 

The Syrian hillsides doing good, 
And casting demons out. 

That Good Physician liveth yet 
Thy friend and guide to be; 

The Healer by Gennesaret 

Shall walk the rounds with thee. 



HYMN OF THE DUNKERS 



559 



OVERRULED 

The threads our hands in bhndness 

spin 
No self-determined plan weaves in; 
Tl e shuttle of the unseen powers 
Works out a pattern not as ours. 

Ah ! small the choice of him who sings 
What sound shall leave the smitten 

strings; 
Fate holds and guides the hand of 

art; 
The singer's is the servant's part. 

The wind-harp chooses not the tone 
That through its trembling threads is 

blown; 
The patient organ cannot guess 
What hand its passive keys shall press. 

Through wish, resolve, and act, our 
will 

Is moved hy undreamed forces still; 

And no man measures in advance 

His strength with untried circum- 
stance. 

As streams take hue from shade and 

sun, 
As runs the lile the song must run; 
But, glad or sad, to His good end 
God grant the varying notes may 

tend ! 



HYMN OF THE DUNKERS 

KLOSTER KEDAR, EPHRATA, PENNSYL- 
VANIA (17^8) 

Sister Maria Christina sings. 

Wake, sisters, wake! the day-star 

shines ; 
Above Ephrata's eastern pines 
The dawn is breaking, cool and calm. 
Wake, sisters, wake to prayer and 

psalm ! 

Praised be the Lord for shade and 

light, 
For toil by day, for rest by night ! 
Praised be His name who deigns to 

bless 
Our Kedar of the wilderness ! 



Our refuge when the spoiler's hand 
Was heavy on our native land ; lo 
And freedom, to her children due, 
The wolf and vulture only knew. 

We praised Him when to prison led. 
We owned Him when the stake blazed 

red; 
We knew, whatever might befall. 
His love and power were over all. 

He heard our prayers; with out- 
stretched arm 
He led us forth from cruel harm; 
Still, wheresoe'er our steps were bent. 
His cloud and fire before us went ! 20 

The watch of faith and prayer He set, 
We kept it then, we keep it yet. 
At midnight, crow of cock, or noon. 
He Cometh sure. He cometh soon. 

He comes to chasten, not destroy. 
To purge the earth from sin's alloy. 
At last, at last shall all confess 
His mercy as His righteousness. 

The dead shall live, the sick be whole. 
The scarlet sin be white as wool; 30 
No discord mar below, above, 
The music of eternal love ! 

Sound, welcome trump, the last 

alarm ! 
Lord God of hosts, make bare thine 

arm. 
Fulfil this day our long desire, 
Make sweet and clean the world with 

fire! 

Sweep, flaming besom, sweep from 

sight 
The lies of time; be swift to smite. 
Sharp sword of God, all idols down, 
Genevan creed and Roman crown. 40 

Quake, earth, through all thy zones, 

till all 
The fanes of pride and priestcraft fall, 
And lift thou up in place of them 
Thy gates of pearl, Jerusalem ! 

Lo ! rising from baptismal flame, 
Transfigured, glorious, yet the same, 
Within the heavenly city's bound 
Our Kloster Kedar shall be found. 



56o 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



He Cometh soon ! at dawn or noon 
Or set of sun, He cometh soon. 50 
Our prayers shall meet Him on His 

way; 
Wake, sisters, wake ! arise and pray ! 



GIVING AND TAKING 

I have attempted to put in English verse 
a prose translation of a poem by Tinneva- 
luva, a Hindoo poet of the third century of 
our era. 

Who gives and hides the giving hand, 
Nor counts on favor, fame, or 

praise. 
Shall find his smallest gift outweighs 

The burden of the sea and land. 

Who gives to whom hath naught been 
given, 
His gift in need, though small indeed 
As is the grass-blade's wind-blown 
seed. 
Is large as earth and rich as heaven. 

Forget it not, O man, to whom 

A gift shall fall, while yet on earth; 
Yea, even to thy seven-fold birth 

Recall it in the lives to come. 

Who broods above a wrong in thought 
Sins much; but greater sin is his 
Who, fed and clothed with kind- 
nesses, 

Shall count the holy alms as naught. 

Who dares to curse the hands that bless 
Shall know of sin the deadliest cost; 
The patience of the heavens is lost 

Beholding man's unthankfulness. 

For he who breaks all laws may still 
In Sivam's mercy be forgiven; 
But none can save, in earth or 
heaven. 

The wretch who answers good with ill. 



THE VISION OF ECHARD 

The Benedictine Echard 
Sat by the wayside well. 

Where Marsberg sees the bridal 
Of the Sarre and the Moselle. 



Fair with its sloping vineyards 
And tawny chestnut bloom. 

The happy vale Ausonius sung 
For holy Treves made room. 

On the shrine Helena builded 

To keep the Christ coat well, 10 

On minster tower and kloster cross, 
The westering sunshine fell. 

There, where the rock-hewn circles 
O'erlooked the Roman's game, 

The veil of sleep fell on him. 

And his thought a dream brcame. 

He felt the heart of silence 
Throb with a soundless word, 

And by the inward ear alone 

A spirit's voice he heard. 20 

And the spoken word seemed writ- 
ten 

On air and wave and sod. 
And the bending walls of sapphire 

Blazed with the thought of God : 

"What lack I, O my children? 

All things are in my hand; 
The vast earth and the awful stars 

I hold as grains of si.nd. 

" Need I your alms ? The silver 
And gold are mine alone; 30 

The gifts ye bring before me 
Were evermore my own. 

" Heed I the nr ise of viols. 

Your pomp jf masque and show ? 

Have I not dawns and sunsets ? 
Have I not winds that blow? 

"Do I smell your gums of in- 
cense ? 

Is my ear with chantings fed ? 
Taste I your wine of worship. 

Or eat your holy bread ? 40 

" Of rank and name and honors 
Am I vain as ye are vain ? 

What can Eternal Fulness 
From your lip-service gain ? 

" Ye make me not your debtor 
Who serve yourselves alone; 

Ye boast to me of homage 
Whose gain is all your own. 



THE VISION OF ECHARD 



561 




" The veil of sleep fell on him, 
And his thought a dream became " 



" For you I gave the prophets, 
For you the Psalmist's lay : 

For you the law's stone tables, 
And holy book and day. 

" Ye change to weary burdens 
The helps that should uplift; 

Ye lose in form the spirit. 
The Giver in the gift. 

" Who called ye to self -torment. 
To fast and penance vain ? 



so 



Dream ye Eternal Goodness 
Has joy in mortal pain ? 

"For the death in life of Nitria. 

For your Chartreuse ever dumb. 
What better is the neighbor. 

Or happier the home ? 

" Who counts his brother's welfare 

As sacred as his own, 
And loves, forgives and pities, 

He serveth me alone. 



60 



562 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



" I note each gracious purpose, 
Each kindly word and deed; 

Are ye not all my children ? 
Shall not the Father heed ? 



70 



"No 



for light and guid- 



prayer 

ance 
Is lost upon mine ear: 
The child's cry in the darkness 
Shall not the Father hear ? 

" I loathe your wrangling councils, 

I tread upon your creeds; 
Who made ye mine avengers. 

Or told ye of my needs? 80 

" I bless men and ye curse them, 

I love them and ye hate; 
Ye bite and tear each other, 

I suffer long and wait. 

" Ye bow to ghastly symbols, 
To cross and scourge and thorn; 

Ye seek his Syrian manger 
Who in the heart is born. 

"For the dead Christ, not the liv- 
ing, 

Ye watch His empty grave, 90 

Whose life alone within you 

Has power to bless and save. 

" O blind ones, outward groping. 

The idle guest forego; 
Who listens to His inward voice 

Alone of Him shall know. 

" His love all love exceeding 
The heart must needs recall. 

Its self-surrendering freedom. 

Its loss that gaineth all. 100 

" Climb not the holy mountains, 
Their eagles know not me; 

Seek not the Blessed Islands, 
I dwell not in the sea. 

" Gone is the mount of Meru, 

The triple gods are gone, 
And, deaf to all the lama's prayers. 

The Buddha slumbers on. 

" No more from rocky Horeb 

The smitten waters gush; no 

Fallen is Bethel's ladder. 

Quenched is the burning bush. 



" The jewels of the Urim 
And Thummim all are dim; 

The fire has left the altar, 
The sign the teraphim. 

" No more in ark or hill grove 

The Holiest abides; 
Not in the scroll's dead letter 

The eternal secret hides. 

" The eye shall fail that searches 
For me the hollow sky; 

The far is even as the near, 
The low is as the high. 

" What if the earth is hiding 
Her old faiths, long outworn ? 

What is it to the changeless truth 
That yours shall fail in turn ? 

" What if the o'erturned altar 
Lays bare the ancient lie ? 

What if the dreams and legends 
Of the world's childhood die? 

" Have ye not still my witness 
Within yourselves alway. 

My hand that on the keys of life 
For bliss or bale I lay ? 

" Still, in perpetual judgment, 

I hold assize within, 
With sure reward of holiness, 

And dread rebuke of sin. 



130 



140 



" A light, a guide, a warning, 

A presence ever near, 
Through the deep silence of the flesh 

I reach the inward ear. 

" My Gerizim and Ebal 

Are in each human soul, 
The still, small voice of blessing, 

And Sinai's thunder-roll. 

"The stem behest of duty. 

The doom-book open thrown, iso 
The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear. 

Are with yourselves alone." 



A gold and purple sunset 

Flowed down the broad Moselle; 
On hills of vine and meadow lands 

The peace of twilight fell. 



THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER 



563 



A slow, cool wind of evening 
Blew over leaf and bloom; 

And, faint and far, the Angelus 159 
Rang from Saint Matthew's tomb. 

Then up rose Master Echard, 
And marvelled: "Can it be 

That here, in dream and vision. 
The Lord hath talked with me?" 

He went his way; behind him 
The shrines of saintly dead. 

The holy coat and nail of cross, 
He leift unvisited. 

He sought the vale of Eltzbach 

His burdened soul to free, 170 

Where the foot-hills of the Eifel 
Are glassed in Laachersee. 

And, in his Order's kloster. 
He sat, in night-long parle. 

With Tauler of the Friends of God, 
And Nicolas of Basle. 

And lo ! the twain made answer : 

" Yea, brother, even thus 
The Voice above all voices 

Hath spoken unto us. 180 

" The world will have its idols. 
And flesh and sense their sign: 

But the blinded eyes shall open. 
And the gross ear be fine. 

" What if the vision tarry ? 

God's time is always best; 
The true Light shall be witnessed. 

The Christ within confessed. 

" In mercy or in judgment 

He shail turn and overturn, 190 

Till the heart shall be His temple 

Wliere all of Him shall learn." 

THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER 

In the minister's morning sermon 
He had told of the primal fall. 

And how thenceforth the wrath of God 
Rested on each and all. 

And how of His will and pleasure, 
All souls, save a chosen few. 

Were doomed to the quenchless burning, 
And held in the way thereto. 



Yet never by faith's unreason 

A saintlier soul was tried, 10 

And never the harsh old lesson 
A tenderer heart belied. 

And, after the painful service 
On that pleasant Sabbath day. 

He walked with his little daughter 
Through the apple-bloom of May. 

Sweet in the fresh green meadows 
Sparrow and blackbird sung; 

Above him their tinted petals 

The blossoming orchards hung. 20 

Around on the wonderful glory 
The minister looked and smiled; 

" How good is the Lord who gives us 
These gifts from His hand, mv 
child ! 

" Behold in tl\e bloom of apples 
And the violets in the sward 

A hint of the old, lost beauty 
Of the Garden of the Lord!" 

Then up spake the little maiden. 
Treading on snow and pink: 30 

" O father ! these pretty blossoms 
Are very wicked, I think. 

" Had there been no Garden of Eden 
There never had been a fall; 

And if never a tree had blossomed 
God would have loved us all." 

"Hush, child!" the father answered, 

" By His decree man fell; 
His ways are in clouds and dark- 
ness. 

But He doeth all things well. 40 

" And whether by His ordaining 

To us Cometh good or ill, 
Joy or pain, or light or shadow 

We must fear and love Him still." 

" Oh, I fear Him ! " said the daughter, 
"And I try to love Him, too; 

But I wish He was good and gentle, 
Kind and loving as you." 



The minister groaned in spirit 
As the tremulous lips of pain 

And wide, wet eyes uplifted 
Questioned his own in vain. 



50 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 




" With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight" 



Bowing his head he pondered 
The words of the httle one; 

Had he erred in his Ufe-long teaching ? 
Had he wrong to his Master done ? 

To what grim and dreadful idol 
Had he lent the holiest name ? 

Did his own heart, loving and human, 
The God of his worship shame ? 60 

And lo ! from the bloom and greenness. 
From the tender skies above, 

And the face of his little daughter, 
He read a lesson of love. 

No more as the cloudy terror 
Of Sinai's mount of law, 



But as Christ in the Syrian lilies 
The vision of God he saw. 

And, as when in the clefts of Horeb, 
Of old was His presence known, 70 

The dread Ineffable Glory 
Was Infinite Goodness alone. 

Thereafter his hearers noted 
In his prayers a tenderer strain, 

And never the gospel of hatred 
Burned on his lips again. 

And the scoffing tongue was prayerful, 
And the blinded eyes found sight, 

And hearts, as flint aforetime. 

Grew soft in his warmth and light. 80 



I' 



INSCRIPTIONS 



565 




Dorothea Dix 



INSCRIPTIONS 



ON A SUN-DIAL 
FOR DR. HENRY I. BOWDITCH 

With warning hand I mark Time's 

rapid flight 
From Ufe's glad morning to its solemn 

night; 
Yet, through the dear God's love, I 

also show 
There 's Light above me by the Shade 

below. 



ON A FOUNTAIN 
FOR DOROTHEA L. DIX 

Stranger and traveller, 
Drink freely and bestow 
A kindly thought on her 

Who bade this fountain flow, 
Yet hath no other claim 

Than as the minister 
Of blessing in God's name. 

Drink, and in His peace go I 



566 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



BY THEIR WORKS 

Call him not heretic whose works at- 
test 

His faith in goodness by no creed con- 
fessed. 

Whatever in love's name is truly done 

To free the bound and lift the fallen 
one 

Is done to Christ. Whoso in deed and 
word 

Is not against Him labors for our Lord. 

When He, who, sad and weary, long- 
ing sore 

For love's sweet service, sought the 
sisters' door. 

One saw the heavenly, one the human 
guest, 

But who shall say which loved the 
Master best ? * 



THE WORD 

Voice of the Holy Spirit, making 
known 
Man to himself, a witness swift and 

sure. 
Warning, approving, true and wise 
and pure. 
Counsel and guidance that misleadeth 

none ! 
By thee the mystery of life is read; 
The picture-writing of the world's 

gray seers, 
The myths and parables of the 
primal years. 
Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted 
Take healthful meanings fitted to our 
needs. 
And in the soul's vernacular express 
The common law of simple right- 
eousness. 
Hatred of cant and doubt of human 

creeds 
May well be felt: the unpardonable 

sin 
Is to deny the Word within ! 



THE BOOK 

Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, 
A minster rich in holy efhgies. 
And bearing on entablature and 
frieze 



The hieroglyphic oracles of old. 
Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit ; 
And the low chancel side-lights half 

acquaint 
The eye with shrines of prophet, 
bard, and saint. 
Their age-dimmed tablets traced in 

doubtful writ ! 
But only when on form and word 
obscure 
Falls from above the white supernal 

light 
We read the mystic characters 
aright, 
And life informs the silent portraiture, 
Until we pause at last, awe-held, be- 
fore 
The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, 
and adore. 



REQUIREMENT 

We live by Faith; but Faith is not the 
slave 
Of text and legend. Reason's voice 

and God's, 
Nature's and Duty's, never are at 
odds. 
What asks our Father of His children, 

save 
Justice and mercy and humility, 
A reasonable service of good deeds. 
Pure living, tenderness to human 
needs. 
Reverence and trust, and prayer for 

light to see 
The Master's footprints in our daily 
ways? 
No knotted scourge nor sacrificial 

knife, 
But the calm beauty of an ordered 
life 
Whose very breathing is unworded 

praise ! — 
A life that stands as all true lives 

have stood. 
Firm-rooted in the faith that God is 
Good. 

HELP 

Dream not, O Soul, that easy is the 
task 
Thus set before thee. If it proves at 
length, 



ORIENTAL MAXIMS 



567 



As well it may, beyond thy natural 
strength, 
Faint not, despair not. As a child may 

ask 
A father, pray the Everlasting 
Good 
For light and guidance midst the 

subtle snares 
Of sin thick planted in life's thor- 
oughfares. 
For spiritual strength and moral hard- 
ihood; 
Still listening, through the noise of 
time and sense. 
To the still whisper of the Inward 

Word; 
Bitter in blame, sweet in approval, 
heard. 
Itself its own confirming evi- 
dence: 
To health of soul a voice to cheer and 

please. 
To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides. 



UTTERANCE 

But what avail inadequate words to 
reach 
The innermost of Truth ? Who shall 

essay, 
Blinded and weak, to point and lead 
the way. 
Or solve the mystery in familiar 

speech ? 
Yet, if it be that something not thy 
own. 
Some shadow of the Thought to 

which our schemes, 
Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best 
but dreams, 
Is even to thy unworthiness made 

known. 
Thou mayst not hide what yet thou 
shouldst not dare 
To utter lightly, lest on lips of 

thine 
The real seem false, the beauty un- 
divine. 
So, weighing duty in the scale of 

prayer. 
Give what seems given thee. It may 

prove a seed 
Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds 
of need. 



ORIENTAL MAXIMS 

PARAPHRASE OF SANSCRIT TRANSLA- 
TIONS 

THE INWARD JUDGE 

From Institutes of Manu. 

The soul itself its awful witness is. 
Say not in evil doing, "No one sees," 
And so offend the conscious One 

within. 
Whose ear can hear the silences of sin 
Ere they find voice, whose eyes un- 
sleeping see 
The secret motions of iniquity. 

Nor in thy folly say, **I am alone." 
For, seated in thy heart, as on a 

throne. 
The ancient Judge and Witness liveth 

still. 
To note thv act and thought; and as 

thy \\\ 
Or good goes from thee, far beyond 

thy reach, 
The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on 

each. 



LAYING UP TREASURE 
From the Mahabhdrata. 

Before the Ender comes, whose char- 
ioteer 

Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each 
year 

Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth 
that kings 

Nor thieves can take away. When all 
the things 

Thou callest thine, goods, pleasures, 
honors fall. 

Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them 
aU. 

CONDUCT 

From the Mahabhdrata. 

Heed how thou livest. Do no act by 

day 
Which from the night shall drive thy 

peace away. 



568 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



In months of sun so live that months 
of rain 

Shall still be happy. Evermore re- 
strain 

Evil and cherish good, so shall there be 

Another and a happier life for thee. 



AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT 

O DEAREST bloom the seasons know, 
Flowers of the Resurrection, blow, 

Our hope and faith restore; 
And through the bitterness of death 
And loss and sorrow, breathe a breath 

Of life forevermore ! 

The thought of Love Immortal blends 
With fond remembrances of friends; 

In you, O sacred flowers. 
By human love made doubly sweet. 
The heavenly and the earthly meet, 

The heart of Christ and ours ! 



THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS 

"All hail!" the bells of Christmas 

rang, 
" All hail ! ' ' the monks at Christmas 

sang, 
The merry monks who kept with 

cheer 
The gladdest day of all their year. 

But still apart, unmoved thereat, 
A pious elder brother sat 
Silent, in his accustomed place. 
With God's sweet peace upon his face. 

" Why sitt'st thou thus ?" his breth- 
ren cried. 
"It is the blessed Christmas-tide; lo 
The Christmas lights are all aglow, 
The sacred lilies bud and blow. 

"Above our heads the joy-bells ring. 
Without the happy children sing. 
And all God's creatures hail the morn 
On which the holy Christ was born ! 

" Rejoice with us; no more rebuke 
Our gladness with thy quiet look. ' ' 
The gray monk answered: "Keep, I 

pray, 
Even as ye list, the Lord 's birthday. 20 



" Let heathen Yule fires flicker red 
Where thronged refector}'- feasts are 

spread; 
With mystery-play and masque and 

mime 
And wait-songs speed the holy time ! 

" The blindest faith may haply save; 
The Lord accepts the things we have; 
And reverence, howsoe'er it strays. 
May find at last the shining ways. 

" They needs must grope who cannot 

see. 
The blade before the ear must be; 30 
As ye are feeling I have felt. 
And where ye dwell I too have dwelt. 

" But now, beyond the things of sense, 

Beyond occasions and events, 

I know, through God's exceeding 

grace. 
Release from form and time and place. 

" I listen, from no mortal tongue. 
To hear the song the angels sung; 
And wait within myself to know 
The Christmas lilies bud and blow. 40 

" The outward symbols disappear 
From him whose inward sight is clear; 
And small must be the choice of days 
To him who fills them all with praise ! 

" Keep while you need it, brothers 

mine. 
With honest zeal your Christmas sign, 
But judge not him who every morn 
Feels in his heart the Lord Christ 

born!" 



AT LAST 



When on my day of life the night is 
falling. 
And, in the winds from unsunned 
spaces blown, 
I hear far voices out of darkness call- 
ing 
My feet to paths unknown, 

Thou who hast made my home of life 
so pleasant, 
Leave not its tenant when its walls 
decay; 



WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET 569 



Love Divine, O Helper ever present, 
Be Thou my strength and stay ! 

Be near me when all else is from me 
drifting; 
Earth, sky, home's pictures, days 
of shade and shine. 
And kindly faces to my own uplifting 
The love which answers mine. 

1 have but Thee, my Father ! let Thy 

spirit 

Be with me then to comfort and up- 
hold; 
No gate of pearl, no branch of palm 1 
merit. 

Nor street of shining gold. 

Suffice it if — my good and ill unreck- 
oned. 
And both forgiven through Thy 
abounding grace — 
I find myself by hands familiar beck- 
oned 
Unto my fitting place. 

Some humble door among Thy many 
mansions. 
Some sheltering shade where sin and 
striving cease. 
And flows forever through heaven's 
green expansions 
The river of Thy peace. 

There, from the music round about 
me stealing, 
I fain would learn the new and holy 
song. 
And find at last, beneath Thy trees of 
heahng. 
The life for which I long. "^ 

WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID 

AT SUNSET 

The shadows grow and deepen round 
me, 
I feel the dew-fall in the air; 
The muezzin of the darkening thicket, 
I hear the night-thrush call to 
prayer. 

The evening wind is sad with fare- 
wells. 
And loving hands unclasp from mine; 



Alone I go to meet the darkness 
Across an awful boundary-line. 

As from the lighted hearths behind me 
I pass with slow, reluctant feet, 10 
What waits me in the land of strange- 
ness? 
What face shall smile, what voice 
shall greet ? 

What space shall awe, what brightness 
blind me? 
What thunder-roll of music stun ? 
What vast processions sweep before 
me 
Of shapes unknown beneath the sun? 

I shrink from unaccustomed glory, 
I dread the myriad-voiced strain; 

Give me the unforgotten faces. 

And let my lost ones speak again. 20 

He will not chide my mortal yearning 
Who is our Brother and our Friend; 

In whose full life, divine and human. 
The heavenly and the earthly blend. 

Mine be the joy of soul-communion, 
The sense of spiritual strength re- 
newed. 

The reverence fot the pure and holy, 
The dear delight of doing good. 

No fitting ear is mine to listen 

An endless anthem's rise and fall; 30 

No curious eye is mine to measure 
The pearl gate and the jasper wall. 

For love must needs be more than 
knowledge; 

What matter if I never know 
Why Aldebaran's star is ruddy. 

Or warmer Sirius white as snow ! 

Forgive my human words, O Father I 
I go Thy larger truth to prove; 

Thy mercy shall transcend my long- 
ing: 39 
I seek but love, and Thou art Love ! 

I go to find my lost and mourned for 
Safe in Thy sheltering goodness 
still. 
And all that hope and faith fore- 
shadow 
Made perfect in Thy holy will ! 



57° 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 








1 



>-;^r-- 




" Immortal in her blameless maidenhood " 

"THE STORY OF IDA" 



Weary of jangling noises never stilled, 
The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, 

the din 
Of clashing texts, the webs of creed 
men spin 
Round simple truth, the children 

grown who build 
With gilded cards their new Jerusalem, 
Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings 
And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy 
things, 



I turn, with glad and grateful heart, 
from them 

To the sweet story of the Florentine, 
Immortal in her blameless maiden- 
hood. 
Beautiful as God's angels and as 
good; 

Feeling that life, even now, may be 
divine 

With love no wrong can ever change 
to hate. 

No sin make less than all-compassion- 
ate! 



ADJUSTMENT 



571 



THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT 

A TENDER child of summers three, 

Seeking her little bed at night, 
Paused on the dark stair timidly. 
"Oh, mother! Take my hand," said 
she, 
"And then the dark will all be 
light." 

We older children grope our way 

From dark behind to dark before; 
And only when our hands we lay, 
Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is 
day. 
And there is darkness nevermore. 

Reach downward to the sunless 
days 
Wherein our guides are blind as 
we, 
And faith is small and hope delays; 
Take Thou the hands of prayer we 
raise. 
And let us feel the light of Thee ! 



THE TWO LOVES 

Smoothing soft the nestling head 

Of a maiden fancy-led. 

Thus a grave-eyed woman said : 

" Richest gifts are those we make, 
Dearer than the love we take 
That we give for love's own sake. 

"Well I know the heart's unrest; 
Mine has been the common quest. 
To be loved and therefore blest. 

"Favors undeserved were mine; 
At my feet as on a shrine 
Love has laid its gifts divine. 

" Sweet the offerings seemed, and yet 
With their sweetness came regret. 
And a sense of unpaid debt. 

" Heart of mine unsatisfied, 
Was it vanity or pride 
That a deeper joy denied ? 

" Hands that ope but to receive 
Empty close; they only live 
Richly who can richly give. 



" Still," she sighed, with moistening 

eyes, 
" Love is sweet in any guise; 
But its best is sacrifice ! 

" He who, giving, does not crave 
Likest is to Him who gave 
Life itself the loved to save. 

" Love, that self -forgetful gives. 
Sows surprise of ripened sheaves. 
Late or soon its own receives." 



ADJUSTMENT 

The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs 
must shed 
That nearer heaven the living ones 

may climb; 
The false must fail, though from our 
shores of time 
The old lament be heard, " Great Pan 

is dead!" 
That wail is Error's, from his high 
place hurled; 
This sharp recoil is Evil under- 

trod; 
Our time's unrest, an angel sent of 
God 
Troubling with life the waters of the 

world. 
Even as they list the winds of the 
Spirit blow 
To turn or break our century-rusted 

vanes; 
Sands shift and waste; the rock 
alone remains 
Where, led of Heaven, the strong tides 

come and go. 
And storm-clouds, rent by thunder- 
bolt and wind, 
Leave, free of mist, the permanent 

stars behind. 
Therefore I trust, although to out- 
ward sense 
Both true and false seem shaken ; I 

will hold 
With newer light my reverence for 
the old 
And calmly wait the births of Provi- 
dence. 
No gain is lost; the clear-eyed saints 
look down 
Untroubled on the wreck of schemes 
and creeds; 



572 



RELIGIOUS POEMS 



Love yet remains, its rosary of good 

deeds 
Counting in task-field and o'erpeopled 

town. 
Truth has charmed hfe; the Inward 

Word survives, 
And, day by day, its revelation 

brings; 
Faith, hope, and charity, whatso- 
ever things 
Which cannot be shaken, stand. Still 

holy lives 
Reveal the Christ of whom the letter 

told, 
And the new gospel verifies the old. 



HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO 
SOMAJ 



The mercy, O Eternal One ! 

By man unmeasured yet. 
In joy or grief, in shade or sun, 

I never will forget. 
I give the whole, and not a part, 

Of all Thou gavest me; 
My goods, my life, my soul and heart, 

I yield them all to Thee ! 



II 



We fast and plead, we weep and pray, 

From morning until even; 
We feel to find the holy way. 

We knock at the gate of heaven ! 
And when in silent awe we wait. 

And word and sign forbear, 
The hinges of the golden gate 

Move, soundless, to our prayer ! 
Who hears the eternal harmonies 

Can heed no outward word; 
Blind to all else is he who sees 

The vision of the Lord ! 



Ill 



O soul, be patient, restrain thy tears. 
Have hope, and not despair; 

As a tender mother heareth her child 
God hears the penitent prayer. 

And not forever shall grief be thine; 
On the Heavenly Mother's breast. 

Washed clean and white in waters of 

joy 



Shall His seeking child find rest. 
Console thyself with His word of grace 

And cease thy wail of woe, 
For His mercy never an equal hath. 

And His love no bounds can know. 
Lean close unto Him in faith and hope; 

How many like thee have found 
In Him a shelter and home of peace, 

By His mercy compassed round ! 
There, safe from sin and the sorrow it 
brings, 

They sing their grateful psalms. 
And rest, at noon, by the wells of God, 

In the shade of His holy palms ! 



REVELATION 

"And I went into the Vale of Beavor, 
and as I went I preached repentance to the 
people. And one morning sitting by the 
tire, a great cloud came over me, and a 
temptation beset me. And it was said: All 
things come by Nature; and the Elements 
and the Stars came over me. And as I sat 
still and let it alone, a living hope arose in 
me, and a true Voice which said: There is 
a living God who made all things. And im- 
mediately the cloud and the temptation 
vanished, and Life rose over all, and my 
heart was glad and I praised the living 
God." — Journal of George Fox, 1690. 

Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale, 
O man of God ! our hope and faith 

The Elements and Stars assail. 

And the awed spirit holds its breath, 
Blown over by a wind of death. 

Takes Nature thought for such as we, 
What place her human atom fills. 

The weed-drift of her careless sea, 
The mist on her unheeding hills ? 
What recks she of our helpless wills ? 

Strange god of Force,with fear, not love, 
Its trembling worshipper ! Can 
prayer 
Reach the shut ear of Fate, or move 
Unpitying Energy to spare ? 
What doth the cosmic Vastness 
care? 

In vain to this dread Unconcern 
For the All-Father's love we look ; 

In vain, in quest of it, we turn 

The storied leaves of Nature 's book, 
The prints her rocky tablets took. 



REVELATION 



573 



I pray for faith, I long to trust; 
I listen with my heart, and hear 

A Voice without a sound: Be just, 
Be true, be merciful, revere 
The Word within thee : God is near ! 

" A light to sky and earth unknown 
Pales all their lights: a mightier 
force 

Than theirs the powers of Nature own, 
And, to its goal as at its source, 
His Spirit moves the Universe. 



Through stars 
death, through 



"Believe and trust, 
and suns, 
Through life and 
soul and sense. 
His wise, paternal purpose runs; 
The darkness of His providence 
Is star-lit with benign intents." 

O joy supreme ! I know the Voice, 
Like none beside on earth or sea; 



Yea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice, 
By all that He requires of me, 
I know what God himself must be. 

No picture to my aid I call, 

I shape no image in my prayer; 

I only know in Him is all 

Of life, light, beauty, everywhere, 
Eternal Goodness here and there ! 

I know He is, and what He is, 

Whose one great purpose is the good 

Of all. I rest my soul on His 
Immortal Love and Fatherhood; 
And trust Him, as His children 
should. 

I fear no more. The clouded face 
Of Nature smiles; through all her 
things 

Of time and space and sense I trace 
The moving of the Spirit's wings, 
And hear the song of hope she sings. 




" There 's a well-sweep at every door in town " 



(See p. 577) 



AT SUNDOWN 



TO E. C. S. 

Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass 
Detects no flower in winter's tuft of 

grass, 
Let this shght token of the debt I owe 
Outhve for thee December's frozen 

day, 



And, hke the arbutus budding under 
snow. 
Take bloom and fragrance from 

some morn of May 
When he who gives it shall have 
gone the way 
Where faith shall see and reverent 
trust shall know. 



THE VOW OF WASHINGTON 



575 



THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888 

Low in the east, against a white, cold 

dawn, 
The black-hned silhouette of the 

woods was drawn, 
And on a wintry waste 
Of frosted streams and hillsides bare 

and brown. 
Through thin cloud-films a pallid 

ghost looked down, 
The waning moon half -faced ! 

In that pale sky and sere, snow-wait- 
ing earth, 
What sign was there of the immortal 
birth ? 
What herald of the One ? 
Lo ! swift as thought the heavenly 

radiance came, 
A rose-red splendor swept the sky like 
flame, 
Up rolled the round, bright sun ! 

And all was changed. From a trans- 
figured world 

The moon's ghost fled, the smoke of 
home-hearths curled 
Up the still air unblown. 

In Orient warmth and brightness, did 
that morn 

O'er Nain and Nazareth, when the 
Christ was born, 
Break fairer than our own ? 

The morning's promise noon and eve 

fulfilled 
In warm, soft sky and landscape hazy- 
hilled 
And sunset fair as they; 
A sweet reminder of His holiest 

time, 
A summer-miracle in our winter 
clime, 
God gave a perfect day. 

The near was blended with the old 
and far, 

And Bethlehem's hillside and the 
Magi's star 
Seemed here, as there and then, — 

Our homestead pine-tree was the 
Syrian palm. 

Our heart's desire the angels' mid- 
night psalm. 
Peace, and good-will to men ! 



THE VOW OF WASHINGTON 

Read in New York, April 30, 1889, at the 
Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration 
of George Washington as the first President 
of the United States. 

The sword was sheathed : in April's 

sun 
Lay green the fields by Freedom 
won; 
And severed sections, weary of de- 
bates. 
Joined hands at last and were United 
States. 

O City sitting by the Sea ! 
How proud the day that dawned on 
thee. 
When the new era, long desired, be- 
gan. 
And, in its need, the hour had found 
the man ! 

One thought the cannon salvos 

spoke. 
The resonant bell-tower's vibrant 
stroke, lo 

The voiceful streets, the plaudit-echo- 
ing halls. 
And prayer and hymn borne heaven- 
ward from St. Paul's ! 

How felt the land in every part 
The strong throb of a nation's heart, 
As its great leader gave, with rever- 
ent awe. 
His pledge to Union, Liberty, and 
Law! 

That pledge the heavens above him 

heard. 
That vow the sleep of centuries 
stirred; 
In world-wide wonder listening peo- 
ples bent 
Their gaze on Freedom's great experi- 
ment. 20 

Could it succeed ? Of honor sold 
And hopes deceived all history 
told. 
Above the wrecks that strewed the 

mournful past. 
Was the long dream of ages true at 
last? 



576 



AT SUNDOWN 



Thank God! the people's choice 

was just, 
The one man equal to his trust, 
Wise beyond lore, and without weak- 
ness good, 
Calm in the strength of flawless recti- 
tude! 

His rule of justice, order, peace. 
Made possible the world's release; 30 
Taught prince and serf that power is 

but a trust, 
And rule alone, which serves the 
ruled, is just; 

That Freedom generous is, but. 

strong 
In hate of fraud and selfish wrong. 
Pretence that turns her holy truth to 

lies. 
And lawless license masking in her 
guise. 

Land of his love I with one glad voice 
Let thy great sisterhood rejoice; 
A century's suns o'er thee have risen 

and set. 
And, God be praised, we are one nation 
yet. ^ 40 

And still we trust the years to be 

Shall prove his hope was destiny, 

Leaving our flag, with all its added 

stars, 
Unrent by faction and unstained by 
wars. 

Lo ! where with patient toil he 

nursed 
And trained the new-set plant at 
first. 
The widening branches of a stately 

tree 
Stretch from the sunrise to the sunset 
sea. 

And in its broad and sheltering 

shade, 
Sitting with none to make afraid, so 
Were we now silent, through each 

mighty limb, 
The winds of heaven would sing the 
praise of him. 

Our first and best ! — his ashes lie 
Beneath his own Virginian sky. 



Forgive, forget, O true and just and 
brave, 

The storm that swept above thy sa- 
cred grave 1 

For, ever in the awful strife 
And dark hours of the nation's life, 
Through the fierce tumult pierced his 

warning word. 
Their father's voice his erring children 
heard ! 60 

The change for which he prayed and 

sought 
In that sharp agony was wrought; 
No partial interest draws its alien 

line 
'Twixt North and South, the cypress 
and the pine ! 

One people now, all doubt beyond. 

His name shall be our Union-bond; 

We lift our hands to Heaven, and here 

and now 
Take on our lips the old Centennial 
vow. 

For rule and trust must needs be 

ours; 
Chooser and chosen both are pow- 
ers 70 
Equal in service as in rights; the 

claim 
Of Duty rests on each and all the 
same. 

Then let the sovereign millions, 

where 
Our banner floats in sun and air. 
From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's 

cold, 
Repeat with us the pledge a century 
old! 



THE CAPTAIN'S WELL 

From pain and peril, by land and 

main, 
The shipwrecked sailor came back 

again; 

And like one from the dead, the 

threshold crossed 
Of his wondering home, that had 

mourned him lost, 



THE CAPTAIN'S WELL 



577 



Where he sat once more with his kith 
and kin, 

And welcomed his neighbors throng- 
ing in. 

But when morning came he called for 

his spade. 
" I must pay my debt? to the Lord," he 

said. 

"Why dig you here?" asked the 

passer-by; 
"Is there gold or silver the road so 

nigh?" lo 

"No, friend," he answered: "but un- 
der this sod 

Is the blessed water, the wine of 
God." 

" Water ! the Powow is a.t your back, 
And right before you the Merrimac, 

"And look you up, or look you 

down, 
There 's a well-sweep at every door in 

town." 

" True," he said, " we have wells of our 

own; 
But this I dig for the Lord alone." 

Said the other: " This soil is dry, you 
know, 

I doubt if a spring can be found be- 
low; 20 

"You had better consult, before you 

dig, 
Some water-witch, with a hazel twig." 

" No, wet or dry, I will dig it here, 
Shallow or deep, if it takes a year. 

"In the Arab desert, where shade is 

none, 
The waterless land of sand and sun, 

" Under the pitiless, brazen sky 
My burning throat as the sand was 
dry; 

"My crazed brain listened in fever 

dreams 
For plash of buckets and ripple of 

streams; 30 



" And opening my eyes to the blinding 
glare, 

And my lips to the breath of the blis- 
tering air, 

"Tortured alike by the heavens and 

earth, 
I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth. 

" Then something tender, and sad, and 

mild 
As a mother's voice to her wandering 

child, 

"Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing 

my head, 
I prayed as I never before had prayed : 

" Pity me, God ! for I die of thirst; 40 
Take me out of this land accurst; 

"And if ever I reach my home again, 
Where earth has springs, and the sky 
has rain, 

" / will dig a well for the passers-by, 
And none shall suffer from thirst as I. 

"I saw, as I prayed, my home once 

more, 
The house, the barn, the elms by the 

door, 

" The grass-lined road, that riverward 

wound, 
The tall slate stones of the burying- 

ground, 

"The belfry and steeple on meeting- 
house hill, 

The brook with its dam, and gray grist 
mill, so 

"And I knew in that vision beyond 

the sea. 
The very place where my well must 

be. 

"God heard my prayer in that evil 

day; 
He led my feet in their homeward way, 

" From false mirage and dried-up 

well, 
And the hot sand storms of a land of 

heU. 



578 



AT SUNDOWN 



" Till I saw at last through the coast- 

hUl's gap, 
A city held in its stony lap, 

"The mosques and the domes of 

scorched Muscat, 
And my heart leaped up with joy 

thereat; 60 

"For there was a ship at anchor 

* lying, . , , 

A Christian flag at its mast-head 

flying, 

" And sweetest of sounds to my home- 
sick ear 

Was my native tongue in the sailor's 
cheer. 

" Now the Lord be thanked, I am back 

again, 
Where earth has springs, and the skies 

have rain, 

" And the well I promised by Oman's 

Sea, 
I am digging for him in Amesbury." 

His kindred wept, and his neighbors 

said: 
"The poor old captain is out of his 

head." 70 

But from morn to noon, and from 

noon to night, 
He toiled at his task with main and 

might; 

And when at last, from the loosened 

earth, 
Under his spade the stream gushed 

forth. 

And fast as he climbed to his deep 

well's brim, 
The water he dug for followed him. 

He shouted for joy : " I have kept my 

word. 
And here is the well I promised the 

Lord!" 

The long years came and the long 
years went. 

And he sat by his roadside well con- 
tent; 80 



He watched the travellers, heat-opn 

pressed, 
Pause by the way to drink and rest, 

And the sweltering horses dip, as they 

drank. 
Their nostrils deep in the cool, sweet 

tank, 

And grateful at heart, his memory 

went 
Back to that waterless Orient, 

And the blessed answer of prayer, 

which came 
To the earth of iron and sky of flame. 

And when a wayfarer weary and hot 
Kept to the mid road, pausing not 90 

For the well's refreshing, he shook his 

head; 
" He don't know the value of water," 

he said; 

" Had he prayed for a drop, as I have 

done, 
In the desert circle of sand and sun, 

"He would drink and rest, and go 

home to tell 
That God's best gift is the wayside 

well!" 



AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION 

On these green banks, where falls too 

soon 
The shade of Autumn's afternoon. 
The south wind blowing soft and 

sweet, 
The water gliding at my feet, 
The distant northern range uplit 
By the slant sunshine over it. 
With changes of the mountain mist 
From tender blush to amethyst. 
The valley's stretch of shade and 

gleam 
Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream, 10 
With glad young faces smiling near 
And merry voices in my ear, 
I sit, metiiinks, as Hafiz might 
In Iran's Garden of Delight. 
For Persian roses blushing red. 
Aster and gentian bloom instead; 



AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION 



579 



For Shiraz wine, this mountain air; 
For feast, the blueberries which I 

share 
With one who proffers with stained 

hands 
Her gleanings from yon pasture lands, 
Wild fruit that art and culture 

spoil, 2 1 

The harvest of an untilled soil; 
And with her one whose tender eyes 
Reflect the change of April skies, 
Midway 'twixt child and maiden 

yet, 

Fresh as Spring's earliest violet; 
And one whose look and voice and 

ways 
Make where she goes idyllic days; 
And one whose sweet, still counte- 
nance 
Seems dreamful of a child's romance; 
And others, welcome as are these, 31 
Like and unlike, varieties 
Of pearls on nature's chaplet strung. 
And all are fair, for all are young. 
Gathered from seaside cities old, 
From midland prairie, lake, and wold, 
From the great wheat-fields, which 

might feed 
The hunger of a world at need. 
In healthful change of rest and play 
Their school-vacations glide away. 40 

No critics these: they only see 
An old and kindly friend in me. 
In whose amused, indulgent look 
Their innocent mirth has no rebuke. 
They scarce can know my rugged 

rhymes. 
The harsher songs of evil times, 
Nor graver themes in minor keys 
Of life's and death's solemnities; 
But haply as they bear in mind 
Some*verse of lighter, happier kind, — 
Hints of the boyhood of the man, si 
Youth viewed from life's meridian, 
Half seriously and half in play ■ 
My pleasant interviewers pay 
Their visit, with no fell intent 
Of taking notes and punishment. 

As yonder solitary pine 
Is ringed below with flower and vine, 
More favored than that lonely tree, 
The bloom of girlhood circles me. 60 
In such an atmosphere of youth 
I half forget my age's truth; 



The shadow of my life's long date 
Runs backward on the dial-plate. 
Until it seems a step might span 
The gulf between the boy and man. 

My young friends smile, as if some 

jay 
On bleak December's leafless spray 
Essayed to sing the songs of May. 
Well, let them smile, and live to know. 
When theii* brown locks are flecked 
with sno«l , 71 

'T is tedious to be always sage 
And pose the dignity of age. 
While so mucli of our early lives 
On memory's playground still sur- 
vives, 
And owns, as at the present hour, 
The spell of youth's magnetic power. 

But though I feel, with Solomon, 
'T is pleasant to behold the sun, 
I would not if I could repeat 80 

A life which still is good and sweet; 
I keep in age, as in my prime, 
A not uncheerful step with time. 
And, grateful for all blessings sent, 
I go the common way, content 
To make no new experiment. 
On easy terms with law and fate, 
For what must be I calmly wait, 
And trust the path I cannot see, — 
That God is good sufficeth me. 90 

And when at last on life's strange play 
The curtain falls, I only pray 
That hope may lose itself in truth. 
And age in Heaven's immortal youth, 
And all our loves and longing prove 
The foretaste of diviner love ! 

The day is done. Its afterglow 
Along the west is burning low. 
My visitors, like birds, have flown; 
I hear their voices, fainter grown, 100 
And dimly through the dusk I see 
Their kerchiefs wave good-night to 

me, — 
Light hearts of girlhood, knowing 

naught 
Of all the cheer their coming brought; 
And, in their going, unaware 
Of silent-following feet of prayer: 
Heaven make their budding promise 

good 
With flowers of gracious woman- 
hood! 



SSo 



AT SUNDOWN 











" And ye, O ancient pine-trees, at whose feet 
He watched in life the sunset's reddening glow " 



R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON 
THE MERRIMAC 

Make, for he loved thee well, our Mer- 
rimac. 
From wave and shore a low and long 

lament 
For him whose last look sought 
thee, as he went 
The unknown way from which no step 

comes back. 
And ye, O ancient pine-trees, at whose 
feet 
He watched in life the sunset's red- 
dening glow, 



Let the soft south wind through 
your needles blow 

A fitting requiem tenderly and 
sweet ! 

No fonder lover of all lovely things 
Shall walk where once he walked, 

no smile more glad 
Greet friends than his who friends 
in all men had, 

Whose pleasant memory to that Is- 
land clings, 

Where a dear mourner in the home he 
left 

Of love's sweet solace cannot be be- 
reft. 



BURNING DRIFT-WOOD 



581 



BURNING DRIFT-WOOD 

Before my drift-wood fire I sit, 
And see, with every waif I burn. 

Old dreams and fancies coloring it, 
And folly's unlaid ghosts return. 

O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft 
The enchanted sea on which they 
sailed, 
Are these poor fragments only left 
Of vain desires and hopes that 
failed ? 

Did I not watch from them the light 
Of sunset on my towers in Spain, 10 

And see, far off, uploom in sight 
The Fortunate Isles I might not gain? 

Did sudden lift of fog reveal 

Arcadia's vales of song and spring, 

And did I pass, with grazing keel, 
The rocks whereon the sirens sing? 

Have I not drifted hard upon 

The unmapped regions lost to man. 

The cloud-pitched tents of Prester 
John, 
The palace domes of Kubla Khan ? 20 

Did land winds blow from jasmine 
flowers, 
Where Youth the ageless Fountain 
fiUs? 
Did Love make sign from rose-blown 
bowers, 
And gold from Eldorado's hills ? 

Alas ! the gallant ships, that sailed 
On blind Adventure's errand sent, 

Howe'er they laid their courses, failed 
To reach the haven of Content. 

And of my ventures, those alone 
Which Love had freighted, safely 
sped, 30 

Seeking a good beyond my own, 
By clear-eyed Duty piloted. 

O mariners, hoping still to meet 
The luck Arabian voyagers met. 

And find in Bagdad's moonlit street, 
Haroun al Raschid walking yet, 

Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams, 
The fair, fond fancies dear to youth. 



I turn from all that only seems. 
And seek the sober grounds 
truth. 



of 



What matter that it is not May, 
That birds have flown, and trees are 
bare. 

That darker grows the shortening day, 
And colder blows the wintry air ! 

The wrecks of passion and desire, 
The castles I no more rebuild. 

May fitly feed my drift-wood fire. 
And warm the hands that age has 
chilled. 

Whatever perished with my ships, 
I only know the best remains; so 

A song of praise is on my lips 

For losses which are now my gains. 

Heap high my hearth! No worth is 
lost; 

No wisdom with the folly dies. 
Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust 

Shall be my evening sacrifice ! 

Far more than all I dared to dream, 
Unsought before my door I see; 

On wings of fire and steeds of steam 
The world's great wonders come to 
me, 60 

And holier signs, unmarked before, 
Of Love to seek and Power to save, — 

The righting of the wronged and poor. 
The man evolving from the slave; 

And life, no longer chance or fate, 
Safe in the gracious Fatherhood. 

I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait, 
In full assurance of the good. 

And well the waiting time must be. 
Though brief or long its granted 
days, 70 

If Faith and Hope and Charity 

Sit by my evening hearth-fire's 
blaze. 

And with them, friends whom Heaven 
has spared. 
Whose love my heart has com- 
forted. 
And, sharing all my joys, has shared 
My tender memories of the dead, — 



582 



AT SUNDOWN 




" What matter tliat it is not May, 
That birds have tlowii, and trees are bare " 



iDear souls who left us lonely here, 
Bound on their last, long voyage, to 
whom 
We, day by day, are drawing near. 
Where every bark has sailing 
room. . 80 

I know the solemn monotone 
Of waters calling unto me; 

I know from whence the airs have 
blown 
That whisper of the Eternal Sea. 

As low my fires of drift-wood burn, 
I hear that sea's deep sounds in- 
crease, 

And, fair in sunset light, discern 
Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace. 



O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTI- 
ETH BIRTHDAY 

Climbing a path which leads back 
never more 
We heard behind his footsteps and 
his cheer; 

Now, face to face, we greet him stand- 
ing here 

Upon the lonely summit of Fourscore ! 

Welcome to us, o'er whom the length- 
ened day 
Is closing and the shadows colder 

grow. 
His genial presence, like an after- 
glow, 

Following the one just vanishing 
away. 



Ik 



HAVERHILL 



583 



Long be it ere the table shall be 
set 
For the last breakfast of the Auto- 
crat, 
And love repeat with smiles and 
tears thereat 

His own sweet songs that time shall 
not forget. 

Waiting with us the call to come up 
higher, 

Life is not less, the heavens are only 
nigher ! 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

From purest wells of English unde- 

filed 
None deeper drank than he, the New 

World's child, 
Who in tlie language of their farm- 
fields spoke 
The wit and wisdom of New England 

folk. 
Shaming a monstrous wrong. The 

world-wide laugh 
Provoked thereby might well have 

shaken half 
The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the 

ball 
And mine of battle overthrew them 

all. 

HAVERHILL 
1640-1890 

Read at the Celebration of the Two Hun- 
dred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the City, 
July 2, 1890. 

O RIVER winding to the sea ! 
We call the old time back to thee; 
From forest paths and water-ways 
The century-woven veil we raise. 

The voices of to-day are dumb, 
Unheard its sounds that go and 

come ; 
We listen, through long-lapsing years, 
To footsteps of the pioneers. 

Gone steepledtown and cultured plain. 
The wilderness returns again, 10 

The drear, untrodden solitude, 
The gloom and mystery of the wood ! 



Once more the bear and panther prowl, 
The wolf repeats his hungry howl, 
And, peering through his leafy screen, 
The Indian's copper face is seen. 

We see, their rude-built huts beside, 
Grave men and women anxious-eyed. 
And wistful youth remembering still 
Dear homes in England's Haverhill. 20 

We summon forth to mortal view 
Dark Passaquo and Saggahew, — 
Wild chiefs, who owned the mighty 

sway 
Of wizard Passaconaway. 

Weird memories of the border town, 
By old tradition handed down, 
In chance and change before us pass 
Like pictures in a magic glass, — 

The terror of the midnight raid. 
The death-concealing ambuscade, 30 
The winter march,through deserts wild, 
Of captive mother, wife, and child. 

Ah ! bleeding hands alone subdued 
And tamed the savage habitude 
Of forests hiding beasts of prey, 
And human shapes as fierce as they. 

Slow from the plough the woods with- 
drew. 
Slowly each year the corn-lands grew; 
Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill 
The Saxon energy of will. 40 

And never in the hamlet's bound 
Was lack of sturdy manhood found. 
And never failed the kindred good 
Of brave and helpful womanhood. 

That hamlet now a city is, 
Its log-built liuts are palaces; 
The wood-path of the settler's cow 
Is Traffic's crowded highway now. 

And far and wide it stretches still. 
Along its southward sloping hill, 50 
And overlooks on either hand 
A rich and many-watered land. 

And, gladdening all the landscape, fair 

As Pison was to Eden's pair. 

Our river to its valley brings 

The blessing of its mountain springs. 



5^4 



AT SUNDOWN 




♦' What tropic splendor can outvie 
Our autumn wooda " 



And Nature holds with narrowing 

space, 
From mart and crowd, her old-time 

grace, 
And guards with fondly jealous arms 
The wild growths of outlying farms. 60 

Her sunsets on Kenoza fall, 
Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall; 
No lavished gold can richer make 
Her opulence of hill and lake. 

Wise was the choice which led our 

sires 
To kindle here their household fires. 
And share the large content of all 
Whose lines in pleasant places fall. 



More dear, as years on years advance, 
We prize the old inheritance, 70 

And feel, as far and wide we roam, 
That all we seek we leave at home. 

Our palms are pines, our oranges 
Are apples on our orchard trees; 
Our thrushes are our nightingales. 
Our larks the blackbirds of our vales. 

No incense which the Orient burns 
Is sweeter than our hillside ferns; 
What tropic splendor can outvie 
Our autumn woods, our sunset sky ? 80 

If, where the slow years came and went, 
And left not affluence, but content, 



TO G. G. 



58s 



Now flashes in our dazzled eyes 
The electric light of enterprise; 

And if the old idyllic ease 
Seems lost in keen activities, 
And crowded workshops now replace 
The hearth's and farm-field's rustic 
grace; 

No dull, mechanic round of toil 
Life's morning charm can quite de- 
spoil; 90 
And youth and beauty, hand in hand. 
Will always find enchanted land. 

No task is ill where hand and brain 
And skill and strength have equal 

gain. 
And each shall each in honor hold, 
And simple manhood outweigh gold. 

Earth shall be near to Heaven when all 
That severs man from man shall fall. 
For, here or there, salvation's plan 
Alone is love of God and man. 100 

dwellers by the Merrimac, 

The heirs of centuries at your back. 
Still reaping where you have not sown, 
A broader field is now your own. 

Hold fast your Puritan heritage, 
But let the free thought of the age 
Its light and hope and sweetness add 
To the stern faith the fathers had. 

Adrift on Time's returnless tide, 
As waves that follow waves, we glide. 
God grant we leave upon the shore 1 1 1 
Some waif of good it lacked before; 

Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth. 
Some added beauty to the earth; 
Some larger hope, some thought to 

make 
The sad world happier for its sake. 

As tenants of uncertain stay, 
So may we live our little day 
That only grateful hearts shall fill 
The homes we leave in Haverhill. 120 

The singer of a farewell rhyme. 
Upon whose outmost verge of time 
The shades of night are falling down, 

1 pray, God bless the good old town ! 



INSCRIPTION 



For the bas-reHef by Preston Powers, 
carved upon the huge boulder in Denver 
Park, Col., and representing the Last Indian 
and the Last Bison. 

The eagle, stooping from yon snow- 
blown peaks. 
For the wild hunter and the bison 

In the changed world below; and 

finds alone 
Their graven semblance in the eternal 

stone. 



LYDIA H. SIGOTJRNEY 

Inscription on her Memorial Tablet in 
Christ Church at Hartford, Conn. 

She sang alone, ere womanhood had 
known 
The gift of song which fills the air 
to-day : 
Tender and sweet, a music all her 
own 
May fitly linger where she knelt to 
pray. 

MILTON 

Inscription on the Memorial Window in 
St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, the 
gift of George W. Childs, of America. 

The new world honors him whose 
lofty plea 
For England's freedom made her 
own more sure, 
Whose song, immortal as its theme, 
shall be 
Their common freehold while both 
worlds endure. 



TO G. G. 

AN AUTOGRAPH 

Graceful in name and in thyself, our 
river 
None fairer saw in John Ward's pil- 
grim flock, 



586 



AT SUNDOWN 




" Thiuk of our thrushes when the lark sings clear, 
Of our sweet Mayflowers when the daisies bloom " 



Proof that upon their century- 
rooted stock 
The English roses bloom as fresh as 
ever. 

Take the warm welcome of new 
friends with thee, 
And listening to thy home's familiar 

chime 
Dream that thou hearest, with it 
keeping time, 
The bells on Merrimac sound across 
the sea. 

Think of our thrushes when the lark 
sings clear. 
Of our sweet Mayflowers when the 

daisies bloom; 
And bear to our and Ihy ancestral 
home 
The kindly greeting of its children here. 



Say that our love survives the sever- 
ing strain; 
That the New England, with the 

Old, holds fast 
The proud, fond memories of a com- 
mon past; 
Unbroken still the ties of blood re- 
main! 



THE BIRTHDAY WREATH 

December 17, 1891. 

Blossom and greenness, making all 
The winter birthday tropical 

And the plain Quaker parlors gay, 
Have gone from bracket, stand, and 

wall; 
We saw them fade, and droop, and fall 

And laid them tenderly away. 



BETWEEN THE GATES 



587 



White virgin lilies, mignonette, 
Blown rose, and pink, and violet, 
A breath of fragrance passing 
by; 
Visions of beauty and decay. 
Colors and shapes that could not 
stay, 
The fairest, sweetest, first to die. 

But still this rustic WTcath of mine, 
Of acorned oak and needled pine. 
And lighter growths of forest 
lands, 
Woven and wound with careful pains. 
And tender thoughts and prayers, re- 
mains, 
As when it dropped from love's dear 
hands. 

And not unfitly garlanded. 

Is he, who, country born and bred. 

Welcomes the sylvan ring which 
gives 
A feeling of old summer days. 
The wild delight of woodland ways, 

The glory of the autumn leaves. 

And, if the flowery meed of song 
To other bards may well belong. 
Be his, who from the farm-field 
spoke 
A word for Freedom when her need 
Was not of dulcimer and reed. 

This Isthmian wreath of pine and 
oak. 



THE WIND OF MARCH 

Up from the sea the wild north wind is 
blowing 
Under the sky's gray arch; 
Smiling, I watch the shaken elm- 
boughs, knowing 
It is the wind of March. 

Between the passing and the coming 
season, 
This stormy interlude 
Gives to our winter-wearied hearts a 
reason 
For trustful gratitude. 

Welcome to waiting ears its harsh 
forewarning 
Of light and warmth to come, 



The longed-for joy of Nature's Easter 
morning, 
The earth arisen in bloom ! 

In the loud tumult winter's strength is 
breaking; 
I listen to the sound, 
As to a voice of resurrection, wak- 
ing 
To life the dead, cold ground. 

Between these gusts, to the soft lapse 
I hearken 
Of rivulets on their way; 
I see these tossed and naked tree-tops 
darken 
With the fresh leaves of May. 

This roar of storm, this sky so gray 
and lowering 
Invite the airs of Spring, 
A warmer sunshine over fields of flow- 
ering, 
The bluebird's song and wing. 

Closely behind, the Gulf's warm 
breezes follow 
This northern hurricane, 
And, borne thereon, the bobolink and 
swallow 
Shall visit us again. 

And, in green wood-paths, in the kine- 
fed pasture 
And by the whispering rills, 
Shall flowers repeat the lesson of the 
Master, 
Taught on his Syrian hills. 

Blow, then, wild wind ! thy roar shall 
end in singing. 
Thy chill in blossoming; 
Come, like Bethesda's troubling angel, 
bringing 
The healing of the Spring. 



BETWEEN THE GATES 

Between the gates of birth and 
death 
An old and saintly pilgrim passed, 
With look of one who witness- 
eth 
The long-sought goal at last. 



AT SUNDOWN 



"O thou whose reverent feet have 
found 
The Master's footprints in thy 
way 
And walked thereon as holy ground, 
A boon of thee I pray. 

" My lack would borrow thy excess, 
My feeble faith the strength of 
thine; 

I need thy soul's white saintliness 
To hide the stains of mine. 

" The grace and favor else denied 
May well be granted for thy sake." 

So, tempted, doubting, sorely tried, 
A younger pilgrim spake. 

"Thy prayer, my son, transcends my 

No power is mine," the sage replied, 
" The burden of a soul to lift 
Or stain of sin to hide. 

" Howe'er the outward life may 
seem. 
For pardoning grace we all must 
pray; 
No man his brother can redeem 
Or a soul's ransom pay. 

" Not always age is growth of good; 

Its years have losses with their 
gain; 
Against some evil youth withstood 

Weak hands may strive in vain. 

'' With deeper voice than any speech 
Of mortal lips from man to man, 

What earth's unwisdom may not 
teach 
The Spirit only can. 

" Make thou that holy guide thine 
own, 
And following where it leads the 
way, 
The known shall lapse in the unknown 
As twilight into day. 

" The best of earth shall still remain, 
And heaven's eternal years shall 
prove 
That life and death, and joy and 
pain, 
Are ministers of Love." 



THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER 

Summer's last sun nigh unto setting 
shines 
Through yon columnar pines, 
And on the deepening shadows of the 
lawn 
Its golden lines are drawn. 

Dreaming of long gone summer days 

like this. 

Feeling the wind's soft kiss. 

Grateful and glad that failing ear and 

sight 

Have still their old delight, 

I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet 
day 

Lapse tenderly away; 
And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast, 

I ask, '^ Is this the last ? 

''Will nevermore for me the seasons 
run 

Their round, and will the sun 
Of ardent summers yet to come forget 

For me to rise and set?" 

Thou shouldst be here, or I should be 
with thee 
Wherever thou mayst be, 
Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences 
of speech 
Each answering unto each. 

For this still hour, this sense of mys- 
tery far 
Beyond the evening star. 
No words outworn suffice on lip or 
scroll : 
The soul would fain with soul 

Wait, while these few swift-passing 
days fulfil 
The wise-disposing Will, 
And, in the evening as at morning, 
trust 
The All-Merciful and Just. 



The solemn joy that soul-communion 
feels 
Immortal life reveals ; 
And human love, its prophecy and 
sign. 
Interprets love divine. 



TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



589 




" Dreaming of long gone summer days like this, 
Feeling the wind's soft kiss " 



Come then, in thought, if that alone 
may be, 
O friend ! and bring with thee 
Thy calm assurance of transcendent 
Spheres 
And the Eternal Years ! 
Aug. 31, 1890. 

TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

8TH MO. 29TH, 1892 

[This, the last of Mr. Whittier's poems, 
"was written but a few weeks before his 
death.] 

Among the thousands who with hail 
and cheer 
Will welcome thy new year, 



How few of all have passed, as thou 
and I, 
So many milestones by ! 

We have grown old together; we 
have seen, 
Our youth and age between. 
Two generations leave us, and to- 
day 
We with the third hold way, 

Loving and loved. If thought must 
backward run 
To those who, one by one, 10 
In the great silence and the dark 
beyond 
Vanished with farewells fond. 



S90 



AT SUNDOWN 



Unseen, not lost; our grateful mem- 
ories still 
Their vacant places fill, 
And with the full-voiced greeting of 
new friends 
A tenderer whisper blends. 

Linked close in a pathetic brother- 
hood 
Of mingled ill and good. 
Of joy and grief, of grandeur and of 
shame, 
For pity more than blame, — 20 

The gift is thine the weary world to 
make 

More cheerful for thy sake. 
Soothing the ears its Miserere pains. 

With the old Hellenic strains. 

Lighting the sullen face of discontent 
With smiles for blessing sent. 

Enough of selfish wailing has been 
had, 
Thank God ! for notes more glad. 

Life is indeed no holiday; therein 

Are want, and woe, and sin, 30 

Death.and its nameless fears, and over 
all 
Our pitying tears must fall. 



Sorrow is real; but the counterfeit 
Which folly brings to it. 

We need thy wit and wisdom to resist, 
O rarest Optimist ! 

Thy hand, old friend! the service of 
our days. 
In differing moods and ways 
May prove to those who follow in our 
train 
Not valueless nor vain. 40 

Far off, and faint as echoes of a 
dream. 
The songs of boyhood seem. 
Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown 
with spring, 
The evening thrushes sing. 

The hour draws near, howe'er delayed 
and late. 
When at the Eternal Gate 
We leave the words and works we call 
our own. 
And lift void hands alone 

For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul 
Brings to that Gate no toll; so 

Giftless we come to Him, who all 
things gives, 
And live because He lives. 



POEMS BY ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER 

Originally published in the volume entitled Hazel Blossoms, and accompanied by 
the following prefatory note: — 

I have ventured, in compliance with the desire of dear friends of my beloved sister, 
Elizabeth H. Whittiek, to add to this little volume the few poetical pieces which 
she left behind her. . . . These poems, with perhaps two or three exceptions, afford but 
slight indications of the inward life of the writer, who had an almost morbid dread of 
spiritual and intellectual egotism, or of her tenderness of sympathy, chastened mirthful- 
ness, and pleasant play of thought and fanc}^, when her shy, beautiful soul opened like 
a flower in the warmth of social communion. In the lines on Dr. Kane her friends will 
see something of her fine individuality, — the rare mingling of delicacy and intensity 
of feeling which made her dear to them. This little poem reached Cuba while the great 
explorer lay on his death-bed, and we are told that he listened with grateful tears while 
it was read to him by his mother. 

I am tempted to say more, but I write as under the eye of her who, while with us, 
shrank with painful deprecation from the praise or mention of performances which 
seemed so far below her ideal of excellence. To those who best knew her, the beloved 
circle of her intimate friends, I dedicate this slight memorial. 

Amesburt, 9th mo., 1874. J- G. W. 



THE DREAM OF ARGYLE 

Earthly arms no more uphold him 
On his prison's stony floor; 

Waiting death in his last slumber, 
Lies the doomed MacCallum More. 

And he dreams a dream of boyhood; 

Rise again his heathery hills, 
Sound again the hound's long baying. 

Cry of moor-fowl, laugh of rills. 

Now he stands amidst his clansmen 
In the low, long banquet-hall, lo 

Over grim ancestral armor 
Sees the ruddy firelight fall. 

Once again, with pulses beating, 
Hears the wandering minstrel tell 

How Montrose on Inverary 

Thief -like from his mountains fell. 

Down the glen, beyond the castle, 
Where the linn's swift waters shine. 

Round the youthful heir of Argyle 
Shy feet glide and white arms 
twine. 20 

Fairest of the rustic dancers. 

Blue-eyed Effie smiles once more, 

Bends to him her snooded tresses. 
Treads with him the grassy floor. 



Now he hears the pipes lamenting. 
Harpers for his mother mourn, 

Slow, with sable plume and pennon. 
To her cairn of burial borne. 

Then anon his dreams are darker. 
Sounds of battle fill his ears, 30 

And the pibroch's mournful wailing 
For his father's fall he hears. 

Wild Lochaber's mountain echoes 
Wail in concert for the dead. 

And Loch Awe's deep waters mur- 
mur 
For the Campbell's glory fled ! 

Fierce and strong the godless tyrants 
Trample the apostate land. 

While her poor and faithful remnant 
Wait for the Avenger's hand. 60 

Once again at Inverary, 

Years of weary exile o'er, 
Armed to lead his scattered clans- 
men. 

Stands the bold MacCallum More. 

Once again to battle calling 

Sound the war-pipes through the 
glen; 
And the court-yard of Dunstaffnage 

Rings with tread of armed men. 



592 



rOEMS BY ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER 



All is lost ! The godless triumph, 
And the faithful ones and true 70 

From the scaffold and the prison 
Covenant with God anew. 

On the darkness of his dreaming 
Great and sudden glory shone; 

Over bonds and death victorious 
Stands he by the Father's throne ! 

From the radiant ranks of martyrs 
Notes of joy and praise he hears, 

Songs of his poor land's deliverance 
Sounding from the future years. 80 

Lo, he wakes ! but airs celestial 
Bathe him in immortal rest, 

And he sees with unsealed vision 
Scotland's cause with victory blest. 

Shining hosts attend and guard him 
As he leaves his prison door; 

And to death as to a triumph 

Walks the great MacCallum More! 



LINES 

WRITTEN ON THE DEPARTURE OF JO- 
SEPH STURGE, AFTER HIS VISIT TO 
THE ABOLITIONISTS OF THE UNITED 
STATES 

Fair islands of the sunny sea ! midst 

all rejoicing things. 
No more the wailing of the slave a 

wild discordance brings; 
On the lifted brows of freemen the 

tropic breezes blow, 
The mildew of the bondman's toil the 

land no more shall know. 

How swells from those green islands, 

where bird and leaf and flower 
Are praising in their own sweet 

way the dawn of freedom's 

hour, 
The glorious resurrection song from 

hearts rejoicing poured. 
Thanksgiving for the priceless gift, — 

man's regal crown restored! 

How beautiful through all the green 
and tranquil summer land, 

Uplifted, as by miracle, the solemn 
churches stand ! 10 



The grass is trodden from the paths 
where waiting freemen throng, 

Athirst and fainting for the .cup of life 
denied so long. 

Oh, blessed were the feet of him whose 
generous errand here 

Was to unloose the captive's chain 
and dry the mourner's tear; 

To lift again the fallen ones a bro- 
ther's robber hand 

Had left in pain and wretchedness by 
the waysides of the land. 

The islands of the sea rejoice; the har- 
vest anthems rise; 

The sower of the seed must own 't is 
marvellous in his eyes; 

The old waste places are rebuilt, — 
the broken walls restored, — 

And the wilderness is blooming like 
the garden of the Lord ! 20 

Thanksgiving for the holy fruit! 

should not the laborer rest. 
His earnest faith and works of love 

have been so richly blest? 
The pride of all fair England shall her 

ocean islands be, 
And their peasantry with joyful hearts 

keep ceaseless jubilee. 

Rest, never! while his countrymen 

have trampled hearts to bleed. 
The stifled murmur of their wrongs 

his listening ear shall heed. 
Where England's far dependencies 

her might, not mercy, know. 
To all the crushed and suffering there 

his pitying love shall flow. 

The friend of freedom everywhere, 

how mourns he for our land. 
The brand of whose hypocrisy burns 

on her guilty hand ! 30 

Her thrift a theft, the robber's greed 

and cunning in her eye. 
Her glory shame, her flaunting flag on 

all the winds a lie ! 

For us with steady strength of heart 
and zeal forever true. 

The champion of the island slave the 
conflict doth renew. 

His labor here hath been to point the 
Pharisaic eye 



DR. KANE IN CUBA 



593 



Away from empty creed and form to 
where the wounded He. 

How beautiful to us should seem the 

coming feet of such ! 
Their garments of self-sacrifice have 

healing in their touch; 
Their gospel mission none may doubt, 

for they heed the Master's call, 
Who here walked with the multitude, 

and sat at meat with all ! 40 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 



He 



his 



rests with the immortals; 

journey has been long: 
For him no wail of sorrow, but a paean 

full and strong ! 
So well and bravely has he done the 

work he found to do, 
To justice, freedom, duty, God, and 

man forever true. 

Strong'to the end, a man of men, from 
out the strife he passed; 

The grandest hour of all his life was 
that of earth the last. 

Now midst his snowy hills of home 
to the grave they bear ^ him 
down, 

The glory of his fourscore years rest- 
ing on him like a crown. 

The mourning of the many bells, the 
drooping flags, all seem 

Like some dim, unreal pageant pass- 
ing onward in a dream; 

And following with the living to his 
last and narrow bed, 

Methinks I see a shadowy band, a 
train of noble dead. 

'T is a strange and weird procession 

that is slowly moving on. 
The phantom patriots gathered to the 

funeral of their son ! 
In shadowy guise they move along, 

brave Otis with hushed tread, 
And Warren walking reverently by 

the father of the dead. 

Gliding foremost in the misty band a 

gentle form is there. 
In the white robes of the angels and 

their glory round her hair. 



She hovers near and bends above her 
world-wide honored child, 

And the joy that heaven alone can 
know beams on her features 
mild. 

And so they bear him to his grave in 

the fulness of his years, 
True sage and prophet, leaving us in a 

time of many fears. 
Nevermore amid the darkness of our 

wild and evil day 
Shall his voice be heard to cheer us, 

shall his finger point the way. 



DR. KANE IN CUBA 

A NOBLE life is in thy care, 

A sacred trust to thee is given; 

Bright Island ! let thy healing air 
Be to him as the breath of Heaven. 

The marvel of his daring life, — 
The self -forgetting leader bold — 

Stirs, like the trumpet's call to strife, 
A million hearts of meaner mould. 

Eyes that shall never meet his own 
Look dim with tears across the sea. 

Where from the dark and icy zone, 
Sweet Isle of Flowers ! he comes to 
thee. 

Fold him in rest, O pitying clime ! 

Give back his wasted strength again. 
Soothe, with thy endless summer time. 

His winter-wearied heart and brain. 

Sing soft and low, thou tropic bird. 
From out the fragrant, flowery 
tree, — 

The ear that hears thee now has heard 
The ice-break of the winter sea. 

Through his long watch of awful night. 
He saw the Bear in Northern skies; 

Now, to the Southern Cross of light 
He lifts in hope his weary eyes. 

Prayers from the hearts that watched 
in fear 
When the dark North no answer 
gave. 
Rise, trembling, to the Father's ear. 
That still His love may help and save. 



594 



POEMS BY ELIZABETH H. WHITTIER 



LADY FRANKLIN 

Fold thy hands, thy work is over; 

Cool thy watching eyes with tears; 
Let thy poor heart, over-wearied. 

Rest aUke from hopes and fears, — 

Hopes, that saw with sleepless vision 
One sad picture fading slow; 

Fears, that followed, vague and name- 
less, 
Lifting back the veils of snow. 

For thy brave one, for thy lost one, 
Truest heart of woman, weep ! 

Owning still the love that granted 
Unto thy beloved sleep. 

Not for him that hour of terror 
When, the long ice-battle o'er. 

In the sunless day his comrades 
Deathward trod the Polar shore. 

Spared the cruel cold and famine, 
Spared the fainting heart's despair. 

What but that could mercy grant 
him? 
What but that has been thy prayer ? 

Dear to thee that last memorial 
From the cairn beside the sea; 

Evermore the month of roses 
Shall be sacred time to thee. 

Sad it is the mournful yew-tree 
O'er his slumbers may not wave; 

Sad it is the English daisy 

May not blossom on his grave. 

But his tomb shall storm and winter 
Shape and fashion year by year, 

Pile his mighty mausoleum, 

Block by block, and tier on tier. 

Guardian of its gleaming portal 
Shall his stainless honor be. 

While thy love, a sweet immortal, 
Hovers o'er the winter sea. 



NIGHT AND DEATH 

The storm-wind is howling 
Through old pines afar; 

The drear night is falling 
Without moon or star. 



The roused sea is lashing 

The bold shore behind. 
And the moan of its ebbing 

Keeps time with the wind. 

On, on through the darkness, 

A spectre, I pass lo 

Where, like moaning of broken 
hearts. 
Surges the grass ! 

I see her lone head-stone, — 

'T is white as a shroud; 
Like a pall hangs above it 

The low drooping cloud. 

Who speaks through the dark 
night 

And lull of the wind ? 
'T is the sound of the pine-leaves 

And sea-waves behind. 20 

The dead girl is silent, — 

I stand by her now; 
And her pulse beats no quicker, 

Nor crimsons her brow. 

The small hand that trembled. 

When last in my own. 
Lies patient and folded. 

And colder than stone. 

Like the white blossoms falling 

To-night in the gale, 30 

So she in her beauty 

Sank mournful and pale. 

Yet I loved her ! I utter 

Such words by her grave. 
As I would not have spoken 

Her last breath to save. 

Of her love the angels 

In heaven might tell. 
While mine would be whispered 

With shudders in hell ! 40 

'T was well that the white ones 

Who bore her to bliss 
Shut out from her new life 

The vision of this; 

Else, sure as I stand here. 

And speak of my love. 
She would leave for my darkness 

Her glory above. 



CHARITY 



595 



THE MEETING WATERS 

Close beside the meeting waters, 
Long I stood as in a dream, 

Watching how the Uttle river 
Fell into the broader stream. 

Calm and still the mingled current 
Glided to the waiting sea; 

On its breast serenely pictured 
Floating cloud and skirting tree. 

And I thought, '^ O human spirit ! 

Strong and deep and pure and blest. 
Let the stream of my existence 

Blend with thine, and find its rest ! " 

I could die as dies the river, 
In that current deep and wide; 

I would live as live its waters, 
Flashing from a stronger tide ! 



THE WEDDING VEIL 

Dear Anna, when I brought her veil, 
Her white veil, on her wedding 
night. 
Threw o'er my thin brown hair its 
folds, 
And, laughing, turned me to the 
light. 

" See, Bessie, see ! you wear at last 

The bridal veil, forsworn for years ! " 
She saw my face, — her laugh was 
hushed, 
Her happy eyes were filled with 
tears. 

With kindly haste and trembling hand 
She drew away the gauzy mist; 

" Forgive, dear heart ! " her sweet 
voice said: 
Her loving lips my forehead kissed. 



We passed from out the searching 
light; 

The summer night was calm and fair : 
I did not see her pitying eyes, 

I felt her soft hand smooth my hair. 

Her tender love unlocked my heart; 

'Mid falling tears, at last I said, 
'' Forsworn indeed to me that veil 

Because I only love the dead !" 

She stood one moment statue-still, 
And, musing, spake, in undertone, 

"The living love may colder grow; 
The dead is safe with God alone !" 



CHARITY 

The pilgrim and stranger who through 

the day 
Holds over the desert his trackless way, 
Where the terrible sands no shade 

have known, 
No sound of life save his camel's moan, 
Hears, at last, through the mercy of 

Allah to all, 
From his tent-door at evening the 

Bedouin's call: 
" Whoever thou art whose need is great, 
In the name of God, the Compassionate 
And Merciful One, for thee I wait !" 

For gifts in His name of food and rest 
The tents of Islam of God are blest; 
Thou who hast faith in the Christ 

above, 
Shall the Koran teach thee the Law of 

Love ? — 
O Christian ! open thy heart and door, 
Cry east and w^est to the wandering 

poor: 
" Whoever thou art whose need is great, 
In the name of Christ, the Compassionate 
And Merciful One, for thee I wait !" 



APPENDIX 



I. EARLY AND UNCOLLECTED 
VERSES 

I AM yielding to what seems, under the 
circumstances, ahnost a necessity, in add- 
ing to the pieces assigned for one reason or 
another to the limbo of an appendix, some 
of my very earliest attempts at verse, which 
have been kept alive in the newspapers 
for the last half century. A few of them 
have even been printed in book form with- 
out my consent, and greatly to my annoy- 
ance, with all their accumulated errors of 
the press added to their original defects and 
crudity. I suppose they should have died a 
natural death long ago, but their feline te- 
nacity of life seems to contradict the theory 
of the " survival of the fittest." I have con- 
sented, at my publishers' request, to take 
the poor vagrants home and give them a 
more presentable appearance, in the hope 
that they may at least be of some interest 
to those who are curious enough to note the 
weak beginnings of the graduate of a small 
country district school, sixty years ago. 
That they met with some degree of favor at 
that time may be accounted for by the fact 
that the makers of verse were then few in 
number, with little competition in their un- 
profitable vocation, and that the standard 
of criticism was not discouragingly high. 

The earliest of the author's verses that 
found their way into print were published 
in the Newburyport Free Press, edited by 
William Lloyd Garrison, in 1826. [The poems 
here collected, with the exception of the 
last, were written during the years 1825- 
1833.] 



THE EXILE'S DEPAKTURE 

Fond scenes, which delighted my youthful 
existence. 
With feehngs of sorrow I bid ye adieu — 
A lasting adieu! for now, dim in the distance. 
The shores of Hibernia recede from my 
view. 
Farewell to the cliffs, tempestrbeaten and 
gray, 
Which guard the lov'd shores of my own 
native land; 
Farewell to the village and sail-shadow'd 
bay, 
The forest-crown'd hill and the water- 
wash'd strand. 

I've fought for my country — I've brav'd 

all the dangers 
That throng round the path of the warrior 

in strife ; 
I now must depart to a nation of strangers, 



And pass in seclusion the remnant of 
life; 
Far, far from the friends to my bosom most 
dear, 
With.none to support me in peril and pain. 
And none but the stranger to drop the sad 
tear 
On the grave where the heart-broken 
exile is lain. 

Friends of my youth ! I must leave you for- 
ever. 
And hasten to dwell in a region un- 
known : — 
Yet time cannot change, nor the broad ocean 
sever, 
Hearts firmly united and tried as our 
own. 
Ah, no ! though I wander, all sad and for- 
lorn, 
In a far distant land, yet shall memory 
trace. 
When far o'er the ocean's white surges I 'm 
borne, 
The scene of past pleasures, — my own 
native place. 

Farewell, shores of Erin, green land of my 
fathers : — 
Once more, and forever, a mournful adieu ! 
For round thy dim headlands the ocean- 
mist gathers, 
And shrouds the fair isle I no longer can 
view. 
I go— but wherever my footsteps I bend, 
For freedom and peace to my own native 
isle. 
And contentment and joy to each warm- 
hearted friend 
Shall be the heart's prayer of the lonely 
Exile ! 



THE DEITY 

The Prophet stood 
On the high mount, and saw the tempest 

cloud 
Pour the fierce whirlwind from its reservoir 
Of congregated gloom. The mountain oak, 
Torn from the earth, heaved high its roots 

where once 
Its branches waved. The fir-tree's shapely 

form, 
Smote by the tempest, lashed the mountain's 

side. 
Yet, calm in conscious purity, the Seer 
Beheld the awful desolation, for 
The Eternal Spirit moved not in the storm. 

The tempest ceased. The caverned earth- 
quake burst 



598 



APPENDIX 



Forth from its prison, and the mountain 

rocked 
Even to its base. The topmost crags were 

thrown, 
With fearful craslilng, down its shuddering 

sides. 
Unawed, the Projjhet saw and heard ; he felt 
Not in the earthquake moved the God of 

Heaven. 
The murmur died away; and from the 

height, 
Torn by the storm and shattered by the 

shock, 
Rose far and clear a pyramid of flame 
Mighty and vast ; the startled mountain deer 
Shrank from its glare, and cowered within 

the shade : 
The wild fowl shrieked — but even then the 

Seer 
Untrembling stood and marked the fearful 

glow, 
For Israel's God came not within the 

flame ! 

The fiery beacon sank. A still, small voice, 
Unlike to human sound, at once conveyed 
Deep awe and reverence to his pious heart. 
Then bowed the holy man; his face he 

veiled 
Within his mantle — and in meekness 

owned 
The presence of his God, discerned not in 
The storm, the earthquake, or the mighty 

flame. 



THE VALE OF THE MERRIMAC 

There are streams which are famous in 
history's story. 
Whose names are familiar to pen and to 
tongue, 
Renowned in the records of love and of 
glory, 
Where knighthood has ridden and min- 
strels have sung: — 
Fair streams thro' more populous regions 
are gliding, 
Tower, temple, and palace their borders 
adorning, 
With tall-masted ships on their broad 
bosoms riding. 
Their banners stretch'd out in the breezes 
of morning; 
And their vales may be lovely and pleasant 
— b\it never 
Was skiff ever wafted, or wav'd a white 
sail lo 

O'er a lovelier wave than my dear native 
river. 
Or brighter tides roU'd than in Merri- 
mac's vale ! 

And fair streams may glide where the cli- 
mate is milder. 
Where winter ne'er gathers and spring 
ever blooms, 
And others may roll where the region is 
wilder. 
Their dark waters hid in some forest's 
deep gloom, 



Where the thunder-scath'd peaks of Hel- 
vetia are frowning. 
And the Rhine's rapid waters encircle 
their bases, 
Where the snows of long years are the 
hoary Alps crowning, 
And the tempest-charg'd vapor their tall 
tops embraces : — . 20 

There sure might be flx'd, amid scenery so 
frightful, 
The region of romance and wild fairy- 
tale, — 
But such scenes could not be to my heart 
so delightful 
As the home of my fathers, —fair Merri- 
mac's vale ! 

There are streams where the bounty of 
Providence musters 
The fairest of fruits by their warm sunny 
sides, 
The vine bending low with the grape's 
heavy clusters, 
And the orauge-tree waving its fruit o'er 
their tides : — 
But I envy not him whose lot has been cast 
there. 
For oppression is there — and the hand of 
the spoiler, 30 

Regardless of justice or mercy, has past 
there, 
And made him a wretched and indigent 
toiler. 
No — dearer to me are the scenes of my 
childhood, 
The moss-cover'd bank and the breeze- 
wafted sail. 
The age-stinted oak and the green groves 
of wild-wood 
That wave round the borders of Merri- 
mac's vale ! 

Oh, lovely the scene, when the gray misty 
vapor 
Of morning is lifted from Merrimac's 
shore ; 
When the fire-fly, lighting his wild gleam- 
ing taper. 
Thy dimly seen lowlands comes glimmer- 
ing o'er; 40 
When on thy calm surface the moonbeam 
falls brightly. 
And the dull bird of night is his covert 
forsaking, 
When the whippoorwill's notes from thy 
margin sound lightly. 
And break on the sound which thy small 
waves are making, 
O brightest of visions ! my heart shall for- 
ever. 
Till memory shall perish and reason shall 
fail. 
Still preference give to my own native river. 
The home of my fathers, and Merrimac's 
vale! 

BENEVOLENCE 

Hail, heavenly gift! within the human 
breast, 
Germ of unnumber'd virtues — by thy aid 



APPENDIX 



599 



The fainting heart, with riving grief op- 
prest, 
Survives the ruin adverse scenes have 
made : 
Woes that have wrung the bosom, cares 
that preyed 
Long on the spirit, are dissolv'd by thee— 
Misfortune's frown, despair's disastrous 
sliade. 
Ghastly disease, and pining poverty. 
Thy influence dread, and at thy approach 
they flee. 

Thy spirit led th' immortal Howard on ; lo 
Nurtur'd by thee, on many a foreign 
shore 
Imperishable fame, by virtue won, 
Adorns his memory, tho' his course is 
o'er ; 
Thy animating smile his aspect wore, 
To cheer the sorrow-desolated soul, 
Compassion's balm in grief-worn hearts to 
pour. 
And snatch the prisoner from despair's 
control. 
Steal half his woes away, and lighter make 
the whole. 

Green be the sod on Cherson's honor 'd 
field. 
Where wraps the turf around his moul- 
dering clay; 20 
There let the earth her choicest beauties 
yield, 
And there the breeze in gentlest mur- 
murs play ; 
There let the widow and the orphan stray. 
To wet with tears their benefactor's 
tomb ; 
There let the rescued prisoner bend his 
way, 
And mourn o'er him, who in the dungeon's 
gloom 
Had sought him and averted misery's fear- 
ful doom. 

His grave perfum'd with heartfelt sighs of 
grief, 
And moistened by the tear of grati- 
tude, — 
Oh, how imlike the spot where war's grim 
chief 30 

Sinks on the field, in sanguine waves im- 
brued ! 
Who mourns for him, whose footsteps can 
be viewed 
With reverential awe imprinted near 
The monument rear'd o'er the man of 
blood ? 
Or who wastes on it sorrow's balmy 
tear ? 
None! shame and misery rest alone upon 
his bier. 

Offspring of heaven! Benevolence, thy 

pow'r 

Bade Wilberforce its mighty champion 

be. 

And taught a Clarkson's ardent mind to 

soar 39 

O'er every obstacle, when serving thee : — 



Theirs was the task to set the sufferer free, 
To break the bonds which bound th' un- 
willing slave, 
To shed abroad the light of liberty. 
And leave to all the rights their Maker 
gave, 
To bid the world rejoice o'er hated slavery's 
grave. 

Diffuse thy charms, Benevolence! let thy 
light 
Pierce the dark clouds which ages past 
have thrown 
Before the beams of truth — and nature's 
right, 
Inborn, let every hardened tyrant own ; 
On our fair shore be thy mild presence 
known ; 50 

And every portion of Columbia's land 
Be as God's garden with thy blessings sown : 
Yea, o'er Earth's regions let thy love ex- 
pand 
Till all united are In friendship's sacred 
band! 

Then in that hour of joy will be fulfilled 

The prophet's heart-consoling prophecy ; 
Then war's commotion shall on earth be 
stilled. 

And men their swords to other use apply ; 
Then Afric's injured sons no more shall try 

The bitterness of slavery's toil and pain, 
Nor pride nor love of gain direct the eye 61 

Of stern oppression to their homes again ; 
But peace, a lasting peace, throughout the 
world shall reign. 



OCEAN 

Unfathomed deep, unfetter'd waste 

Of never-silent waves, 
Each by its rushing follower chas'd, 

Through unillumin'd caves, 
And o'er the rocks whose turrets rude, 

E'en since the birth of time. 
Have heard amid thy solitude 

The billow's ceaseless chime. 

O'er what recesses, depths unknown, 

Dost thou thy waves impel, i< 

Where never yet a sunbeam shone, 

Or gleam of moonlight fell ? 
For never yet did mortal eyes 

Thy gloom-wrapt deeps behold, 
And naught of thy dread mysteries 

The tongue of man hath told. 

What, though proud man presume to hold 

His course upon thy tide. 
O'er thy dark billows uncontroll'd 

His fragile bark to guide — 2c 

Yet who, upon thy mountain waves, 

Can feel himself secure 
While sweeping o'er thy yawning caves, 

Deep, awful, and obscure ? 

But thou art mild and tranquil now — 

Thy wrathful spirits sleep, 
And gentle billows, calm and slow, 

Across thy bosom sweep. 



6oo 



APPENDIX 



Yet where the dim horizon's bound 
Eests on thy sparkling bed, 30 

The tempest-cloud, in gloom profound, 
Prepares its wrath to shed. 

Thus, mild and calm in youth's bright Ijour 

The tide of life appears, 
When fancy paints, with magic spell, 

The bliss of coming years ; 
But clouds will rise, and darkness bring 

O'er life's deceitful way. 
And cruel disappointment fling 

Its shade on hope's dim ray. 4° 



THE SICILIAN VESPERS 

Silence o'er sea and earth 

With the veil of evening fell, 
Till the convent-tower sent deeply forth 

The chime of its vesper bell. 
One moment — and that solemn sound 

Fell heavy on the ear ; 
But a sterner echo passed around, 

And the boldest shook to hear. 

The startled monks thronged up, 

In the torchlight cold and dim ; 10 

And the priest let fall his incense-cup. 

And the virgin hushed her hymn, 
For a boding clash, and a clanging tramp. 

And a summoning voice were heard, 
And fretted wall, and dungeon damp. 

To the fearful echo stirred. 

The peasant heard the sound. 

As he sat beside his hearth ; 
And the song and the dance were hushed 
around, 

With the fire-side tale of mirth. 20 

The chieftain shook in his banner'd hall, 

As the sound of fear drew nigh, 
And the warder shrank from the castle wall. 

As the gleam of spears went by. 

Woe ! woe ! to the stranger, then, 

At the feast and flow of wine, 
In the red array of mailed men, 

Or bowed at the holy shrine ; 
For the wakened pride of an injured land 

Had burst its iron thrall, 30 

From the plumed chief to the pilgrim band ; 

Woe ! woe ! to the sons of Gaul ! 

Proud beings fell that hour, 

With tlie young and passing fair, 
And the flame went up from dome and tower. 

The avenger's arm was there ! 
The stranger priest at the altar stood. 

And clasped his beads in prayer. 
But the holy shrine grew dim with blood, 

The avenger found him there ! 40 

Woe ! woe ! to the sons of Gaul, 

To the serf and mailed lord ; 
They were gathered darkly, one and all. 

To the harvest of the sword : 
And the morning sun, with a quiet smile, 

Shone out o'er hill and glen. 
On ruined temple and smouldering pile, 

And the ghastly forms of men. 



Ay, the sunshine sweetly smiled. 

As its early glance came forth, 50 

It had no sympathy with the wild 

And terrible things of earth. 
And the man of blood that day might read. 

In a language freely given, 
How ill his dark and midnight deed 

Became the calm of Heaven. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE NORTH 

Spirit of the frozen North, 

Where the wave is chained and still. 
And the savage bear looks forth 

Nightly from his caverned hill ! 
Down from thy eternal throne, 

From thy land of cloud and storm, 
Where the meeting icebergs groan, 

Sweepeth on thy wrathful form. 

Spirit of the frozen wing ! 

Dweller of a voiceless clime, 10 

Where no coming on of spring 

Gilds the weary course of time ! 
Monarch of a realm untrod 

By the restless feet of men. 
Where alone the hand of God 

'Mid his mighty works hath been ! 

Throned amid the ancient hills. 

Piled with undecaying snow, 
Flashing with the path of rills, 

Frozen in their first glad flow ; 20 

Thou hast seen the gloomy north, 

Gleaming with unearthly light. 
Spreading its pale banners forth. 

Checkered with the stars of night. 

Thou hast gazed untrembling, where 

Giant forms of flame were driven. 
Like the spirits of the air, 

Striding up the vault of heaven ! 
Thou hast seen that midnight glow. 

Hiding moon and star and sky, 30 

And the icy hills below 

Reddening to the fearful dye. 



Dark and desolate and lone, 

Curtained with the tempest-cloud, 
Drawn around thy ancient throne 

Like oblivion's moveless shroud, 
Dim and distantly the sun 

Glances on thy palace walls. 
But a shadow cold and dun 

Broods along its pillared halls. 

Lord of sunless depths and cold ! 

Chainer of the northern sea ! 
At whose feet the storm is rolled. 

Who hath power to humble thee ? 
Spirit of the stormy north ! 

Bow thee to thy Maker's nod ; 
Bend to him who sent thee forth, 

Servant of the living God. 



40 



THE EARTHQUAKE 

Calmly the night came down 
O'er Scylla's shatter'd walls ; 



APPENDIX 



6oi 



How desolate that silent town ! 

How tenantless the halls, 
Where yesterday her thousands trod, 

And princes graced their proud abode ! 

Lo, on the wet sea sand, 

Humbled in anguish now, 
The despot, midst his menial band. 

Bent down his kingly brow ; lo 

And prince and peasant knelt in prayer, 

For grief had made them equal there. 

Again as at the morn, 
The earthquake roll'd its car : 

Lowly the castle-towers were borne, 
That mock'd the storms of war ; 

The moiuitain reeled, its shiver'd brow 

"Went down among the waves below. 

Up rose the kneelers then. 

As the wave's rush was heard: 20 

The horror of those fated men 

Was uttered by no word. 
But closer still the mother prest 
The infant to her faithful breast. 

One long, wild shriek went up, 

Full mighty in despair ; 
As bow'd to drink death's bitter cup, 

The thousands gathered there ; 
And man's strong wail and woman's cry 
Blent as the waters hurried by. 30 

On swept the whelming sea ; 

The mountains felt its shock, 
As the long cry of agony 

Thrills thro' their towers of rock ; 
An echo round that fatal shore 
The death wail of the sufferers bore. 

The morning sun shed forth 

Its light upon the scene, 
Where tower and palace strew'd the earth 

With wrecks of what had been. 40 

But of the thousands who were gone, 
No trace was left, no vestige shown. 



JUDITH AT THE TENT OF HOLO- 
FERNES 

Night was down among the mountains, 

In her dim and quiet manner. 
Where Bethulia's silver fountains 

Gushed beneath the Assyrian banner. 
Moonlight, o'er her meek dominion, 

Asa mighty flag unfurled, 
Like an angel's snowy pinion 

Resting on a darkened world ! 

Faintly rose the city's murmur. 

But the crowded camp was calm ; 10 
Girded in their battle armor, 

Each a falchion at his arm, 
Lordly chief and weary vassal 

In the arms of slumber fell ; 
It had been a day of wassail, 

And the wine had circled well. 

Underneath his proud pavilion 
Lay Assyria's champion, 



Where the ruby's rich vermilion 
Shone beside the beryl-stone. 20 

With imperial purple laden. 
Breathing in the perfumed air, 

Dreams he of the Jewish maiden, 
With her dark and jewelled hair. 

Who is she, the pale-browed stranger, 

Bending o'er that son of slaughter? 
God be with thee in thy danger, 

Israel's lone and peerless daughter I 
She hath bared her queenly beauty 

To the dark Assyrian's glance ; 30 

Now a high and sterner duty 

Bids her to his couch advance. 

Beautiful and pale she bendeth 

In her earnest prayer to Heaven ; 
Look again, that maiden standeth 

In the strength her God has given ! 
Strangely is her dark eye kindled. 

Hot blood through her cheek is poured ; 
Lo, her every fear hath dwindled, 

And her hand is on the sword ! 40 

Upward to the flashing curtain. 

See, that mighty blade is driven, 
And its fall ! — 't is swift and certain 

As the cloud-fire's track in heaven! 
Down, as with a power supernal, 

Twice the lifted weapon fell ; 
Twice, his slumber is eternal — 

Who shall wake the infidel? 

Sunlight on the mountains streameth 

Like an air-borne wave of gold ; 50 

And Bethulia's armor gleameth 

Round Judea's banner-fold. 
Down they go, the mailed warriors. 

As the upper torrents sally 
Headlong from their mountain-barriers 

Down upon the sleeping valley. 

Rouse thee from thy couch, Assyrian ! 

Dream no more of woman's smile ; 
Fiercer than the leaguered Tyrian, 

Or the dark-browed sons of Nile, 60 
Foes are on thy slumber breaking. 

Chieftain, to thy battle rise ! 
Vain the call — he will not waken — 

Headless on his couch he lies. 

Who hath dimmed your boasted glory ? 

What hath woman's weakness done? 
Whose dark brow is up before ye, 

Blackening in the fierce-haired sun? 
Lo ! an eye that never slumbers 

Looketh in its vengeance down ; 70 
And the thronged and mailed numbers 

Wither at Jehovah's frown ! 



METACOM 

Red as the banner which enshrouds 
The warrior-dead, when strife is done, 

A broken mass of crimson clouds 
Hung over the departed sun. 

The shadow of the western hill 

Crept swiftly down, and darkly still. 

As if a sullen wave of night 



6o2 



APPENDIX 



Were rushing on the pale twilight ; 
The forest-openings grew more dim, 
As glimpses of the arching blue lo 

And waking stars came softly through 
The rifts of many a giant limb. 
Above the wet and tangled swamp 
White vapors gathered thick and damp, 
And through their cloudy curtaining 
Flapped many a brown and dusky wing — 
Pinions that fan the moonless dun, 
But fold them at the rising sun ! 

Beneath the closing veil of night, 

And leafy bough and curling fog, 20 
With his few warriors ranged in sight — 
Scarred relics of his latest fight- 

Rested the fiery Wampanoag. 
He leaned upon his loaded gun, 
Warm with its recent work of death. 
And, save the struggling of his breath, 
That, slow and hard and long-repressed. 
Shook the damp folds around his breast, 
An eye that was unused to scan 
The sterner moods of that dark man 30 
Had deemed his tall and silent form 
With hidden passion fierce and warm. 
With that fixed eye, as still and dark 
As clouds which veil their lightning spark, 
That of some forest-champion. 
Whom sudden death had passed upon — 
A giant frozen into stone ! 
Son of the throned Sachem ! — Thou, 
The sternest of the forest kings, — 
Shall the scorned pale-one trample now, 40 
Unambushed on thy mountain's brow. 
Yea, drive his vile and hated plough 

Among thy nation's holy things. 
Crushing the warrior-skeleton 
In scorn beneath his armed heel. 
And not a hand be left to deal 
A kindred vengeance fiercely back. 
And cross in blood the Spoiler's track ? 

He turned him to his trustiest one. 
The old and war-tried Annawon— 50 
" Brother!" — The favored warrior stood 
In hushed and listening attitude — 
'* This night the Vision-Spirit hath 

Unrolled the scroll of fate before me ; 
And ere the sunrise cometh. Death 

Will wave his dusky pinion o'er me ! 
Nay, start not — well I know thy faith — 
Tliy weapon now may keep its sheath ; 
But, when the bodeful morning breaks. 
And the green forest widely wakes 60 

Unto the roar of English thunder. 
Then trusted brother, be it thine 
To burst upon the foeman's line. 

And rend his serried strength asunder. 
Perchance thyself and yet a few 
Of faithful ones may struggle through, 
And, rallying on the wooded plain, 
Strike deep for vengeance once again. 
And offer up in pale-face blood 
An offering to the Indian's God." 70 

A musket shot — a sharp, quick yell — 
And then the stifled groan of pain, 

Told that another red man fell, — 
And blazed a sudden light again 

Across that kuigly brow and eye, 



Like lightning on a clouded sky, — 
And a low growl, like that which thrills 
The hunter of the Eastern hills. 

Burst through clenched teeth and rigid 
lip- 
And, when the great chief spoke again 80 
His deep voice shook beneath its rein. 

As wrath and grief held fellowship. 

" Brother ! methought when as but now 

I pondered on my nation's wrong, 
With sadness on his shadowy brow 

My father's spirit passed along ! 
He pointed to the far south-west. 

Where sunset's gold was growing dim, 

And seemed to beckon me to him. 
And to the forests of the blest ! — 90 

My father loved the white men, when 
They were but children, shelterless. 
For his great spirit at distress 
Melted to woman's tenderness — 
Nor was it given him to know 

That children whom he cherished then 

Would rise at length, like armed men, 
To work his people's overthrow. 
Yet thus it is ; — the God before 

Whose awful shrine the pale ones bow 
Hath frowned upon, and given o'er loi 

The red man to the stranger now ! 
A few more moons, and there will be 
No gathering to the council tree ; 
The scorched earth — the blackened log — 

The naked bones of warriors slain. 

Be the sole relics which remain 
Of the once mighty Wampanoag ! 
The forests of our hunting-land, 

With all their old and solemn green, no 
Will bow before the Spoiler's axe — 
The plough displace the hunter's tracks, 
And the tall prayer-house steeple stand 

Where the Great Spirit's shrine hath 
been! 

" Yet, brother, from this awful hour 

The dying curse of Metacom 
Shall linger with abiding power 

Upon the spoilers of my home. 

The fearful veil of things to come. 

By Kitchtan's hand is lifted from 120 

The shadows of the embryo years ; 
And I can see more clearly through 
Than ever vlsioned Powwaw did. 
For all the future comes unhid 

Yet welcome to my tranced view. 
As battle-yell to warrior-ears ! 
From stream and lake and hunting-hill 

Our tribes may vanish like a dream. 

And even my dark curse may seem 
Like idle winds when Heaven is still, 130 

No bodeful harbinger of ill ; 
But, fiercer than the downright thunder. 
When yawns the mountain-rock asunder, 
And riven pine and knotted oak 
Are reeling to the fearful stroke, 

That curse shall work its master's will ! 
The bed of yon blue mountain stream 
Shall pour a darker tide than rain — 
The sea shall catch its blood-red stain, 
And broadly on its banks shall gleam 140 

The steel of those who should be bro- 
thers ; 



APPENDIX 



603 



Yea, those whom one fond parent nursed 
Shall meet in strife, like fiends accursed, 
And trample down the once loved form, 
While yet with breathing passion warm, 
As fiercely as they would another's ! " 

The morning star sat dimly on 
The lighted eastern horizon — 
The deadly glare of levelled gun 

Came streaking through the twilight 
haze, 150 

And naked to Its reddest blaze, 
A hundred warriors sprang in view ; 

One dark red arm was tossed on high, 
One giant shout came hoarsely through 

The clangor and the charging cry, 
Just as across the scattering gloom, 
Red as the naked hand of Doom, 

The English volley hurtled by — 
The arm — the voice of Metacom ! — 

One piercing shriek — one vengeful 
yell, 160 

Sent like an arrow to the sky, 

Told when the hunter-monarch fell ! 



MOUNT AGIOCHOOK 

Gray searcher of the upper air. 

There 's sunshine on thy ancient walls, 
A crown upon thy forehead bare, 

A flash upon thy waterfalls. 
A rainbow glory in the cloud 
Upon thine awful summit bowed, 
The radiant ghost of a dead storm ! 

And music from tlie leafy shroud 
Which swathes in green thy giant form, 

Mellowed and softened from above 10 
Steals downward to the lowland ear, 

Sweet as the first, fond dream of love 
That melts upon the maiden's ear. 

The time has been, white giant, when 

Thy shadows veiled the red man's 
home, 
And over crag and serpent den, 
And wild gorge where the steps of men 

In chase or battle might not come, 
The mountain eagle bore on high. 

The emblem of the free of soul, 20 

And, midway in the fearful sky. 
Sent back the Indian battle cry, 

And answered to the thunder's roll. 

The wigwam fires have all burned out, 

The moccasin has left no track ; 
Nor wolf nor panther roam about 

The Saco and the Merrimac. 
And thou, that liftest up on high 
Thy mighty barriers to the sky. 

Art not the haunted mount of old, 30 

Where on each crag of blasted stone 
Some dreadful spirit found his throne, 

And hid within the thick cloud fold, 
Heard only in the thunder's crash, 
Seen only in the lightning's flash. 
When crumbled rock and riven branch 
Went down before the avalanche ! 

No more that spirit moveth there ; 
The dwellers of the vale are dead ; 



No hunter's arrow cleaves the air ; 40 

No dry leaf rustles to his tread. 
The pale-face climbs thy tallest rock. 
His hands thy crystal gates unlock ; 
From steep to steep his maidens call, 
Light laughing, like the streams that 

fall 
In music down thy rocky wall, 
And only when their careless tread 
Lays bare an Indian arrow-head, 
Spent and forgetful of the deer, 
Think of the race that perished here. 50 

Oh, sacred to the Indian seer, 

Gray altar of the men of old ! 
Not vainly to the listening ear 

The legends of thy past are told, — 
Tales of the downward sweeping flood. 
When bowed like reeds thy ancient wood ; 
Of armed hands, and spectral forms ; 

Of giants in their leafy shroud. 

And voices calling long and loud 
In the dread pauses of thy storms. 60 

For still within their caverned home 
Dwell the strange gods of heathendom ! 



THE DRUNKARD TO HIS BOTTLE 

Hoot ! — daur ye shaw ye're face again, 
Ye auld black thief o' purse an' brain ? 
For foul disgrace, for dool an' pain 

An' shame I ban ye : 
Wae 's me, that e'er my lips have ta'en 

Your kiss uncanny ! 

Nae mair, auld knave, without a shillin' 
To keep a starvin' wight frae stealin' 
Ye '11 sen' me hameward, bhn' and reelln', 

Frae nightly swagger, 10 

By wall an' post my pathway feelin', 

Wi' mony a stagger. 

Nae mair o' fights that bruise an' mangle, 
Nae mair o' nets my feet to tangle, 
Nae mair o' senseless brawl an' wrangle, 

Wi' frien' an' wife too, 
Nae mair o' deavin' din an' jangle 

My feckless life through. 

Ye thievin', cheatin' auld Cheap Jack, 
Peddlin' your poison brose. I crack 20 

Your banes against my ingle-back 

Wi' meikle pleasure. 
Deil mend ye i' his workshop black, 

E'en at his leisure ! 

I '11 brak ye're neck, ye foul auld sinner, 
I '11 spill ye're bluid, ye vile beginner 
O' a' the ills an' aches that winna 

Quat saul an' body ! 
Gie me hale breeks an' weel-spread din- 
ner — 

Deil tak' ye're toddy ! 30 

Nae mair wi' witches' broo gane gyte, 
Gie me ance mair the auld delight 
O' sittin' wi' my bairns in sight, 

The gude wife near. 
The weel-spent day, the peacefu' night, 

The mornin' cheer I 



6o4 



APPENDIX 



Cock a' ye're heids, my bairns fu' gleg, 
My winsome Kobin, Jean, an' Meg, 
For food and claes ye shall ua beg 

A doited daddie. 40 

Dance, auld wife, on your girl-day leg, 

Ye 've foun' your laddie ! 



THE FAIE QUAKERESS 

She was a fair young girl, yet on her brow 
No pale pearl shone, a blemish on the pure 
And snowy lustre of its living light, 
No radiant gem shone beautifully through 
The shadowing of her tresses, as a star 
Through the darlv sky of midnight ; and no 

wreath 
Of coral circled on her queenly neck, 
In mockery of the glowing cheek and lip, 
Whose hue the fairy guardian of the flowers 
Might never rival when her delicate touch 
Tinges the rose of springtime. 

Unadorned, 
Save by her youthful charms, and with a 
garb 12 

Simple as Nature's self, why turn to her 
The proud and gifted, and the versed in all 
The pageantry of fashion ? 

She hath not 
Moved down the dance to music, when the 

hall 
Is lighted up like sunshine, and the thrill 
Of the light viol and the mellow flute, 
And the deep tones of manhood, softened 

down 
To very music melt upon the ear. — 20 

She has not mingled with the hollow world 
Nor tampered with its mockeries, until all 
The delicate perceptions of the heart, 
The innate modesty, the watchful sense 
Of maiden dignity, are lost within 
The maze of fashion and the din of crowds. 

Yet Beauty hath its homage. Kings have 

bowed 
From the tall majesty of ancient thrones 
With a prostrated knee, yea, cast aside 
The awfulness of time-created power 30 
For the regardful glances of a child. 
Yea, the high ones and powerful of Earth, 
The helmed sons of victory, the grave 
And schooled philosophers, the giant men 
Of overmastering intellect, have turned 
Each from the separate idol of his high 
And vehement ambition for the low 
Idolatry of human loveliness ; 
And bartered the sublimity of mind, 
The godlike and commanding intellect 40 
Which nations knelt to, for a woman's tear, 
A soft-toned answer, or a wanton's smile. 

And in the chastened beauty of that eye. 
And in the beautiful play of that red lip, 
And in the quiet smile, and in the voice 
Sweet as the tuneful greeting of a bird 
To the first flowers of springtime, there is 

more 
Than the perfection of the painter's skill 
Or statuary's moulding. Mind is there, 



The pure and holy attributes of soul, 50 
The seal of virtue, the exceeding grace 
Of meekness blended with a maiden pride ; 
Nor deem ye that beneath the gentle smile. 
And the calm temper of a chastened mind 
No warmth of passion kindles, and no tide 
Of quick and earnest feeling courses on 
From the warm heart's pulsations. There 

are springs 
Of deep and pure affection, hidden now, 
Within that quiet bosom, which but wait 
The thrilling of some kindly touch, to flow 
Like waters from the Desert-rock of old. 61 

BOLIVAR 

A DIRGE is wailing from the Gulf of storm- 
vexed Mexico, 
To where through Pampas' solitudes the 

mighty rivers flow ; 
The dark Sierras hear the sound, and from 

each mountain rift. 
Where Andes and Cordilleras their awful 

summits lift, 
Where Cotopaxi's fiery eye glares redly 

upon heaven. 
And Chimborazo's shattered peak the upper 

sky has riven ; 
From mount to mount, from wave to wave, 

a wild and long lament, 
A sob that shakes like her earthquakes the 

startled continent ! 

A light dies out, a life is sped — the hero's 

at whose word 
The nations started as from sleep, and 

girded on the sword ; 
The victor of a hundred fields where blood 

was poured like rain. 
And Freedom's loosened avalanche hurled 

down the hosts of Si)ain, 
The eagle soul on Junin's slope who showed 

his shouting men 
A grander sight than Balboa saw from 

wavewashed Darien 
As from the snows with battle red died out 

the sinking sun. 
And broad and vast beneath him lay a world 

for freedom won. 

How died that victor? In the field with 
banners o'er him thrown. 

With trumpets in his failing ear, by char, 
ging squadrons blown, 

With scattered foemen flying fast and fear 
fully before him, 

With shouts of triumph swelling round and 
brave men bending o'er him? 

Not on his fields of victory, nor in his coun- 
cil hall. 

The worn and sorrowing leader heard the 
inevitable call. 

Alone he perished in the land he saved 
from slavery's ban, 

Maligned and doubted and denied, a broken- 
hearted man ! 

Now let the New World's banners droop 

above the fallen chief. 
And let the moTintaineer's dark eyes be wet 

with tears of grief ! 



APPENDIX 



605 



For slander's sting, for envy's hiss, for 

friendsliip hatred grown, 
Can funeral pomp, and tolling bell, and 

priestly mass atone ? 
Better to leave unmourned the dead than 

wrong men while they live ; 
What if the strong man failed or erred, 

could not his own forgive ? 
O people freed by him, repent above your 

hero's bier: 
The sole resource of late remorse is now his 

tomb to rear ! 



ISABELLA OF AUSTKIA 

'Midst the palace bowers of Hungary, im- 
perial Presburg's pride, 

With the noble born and beautiful as- 
sembled at her side, 

She stood beneath the summer heavens, the 
soft wind sighing on, 

Stirring the green and arching boughs like 
dancers in the sun. 

The beautiful pomegranate flower, the 
snowy orange bloom, 

The lotus and the trailing vine, the rose's 
meek perfume. 

The willow crossing with its green some 
statue's marble hair. 

All that might charm the fresh young sense, 
or light the soul, was there ! 

But she, a monarch's treasured one, leaned 

gloomily apart, 
With her dark eyes tearfully cast down; 

and a shadow on her heart. 10 

Young, beautiful, and dearly loved, what 

sorrow hath she known ? 
Are not the hearts and swords of all held 

sacred as her own ? 
Is not her lord the kingliest in battle-field 

or tower ? 
The wisest in the council-hall, the gayest in 

the bower? 
Is not his love as full and deep as his own 

Danube's tide ? 
And wherefore in her princely home weeps 

Isabel, his bride? 

She raised her jewelled hand, and flung her 

veiling tresses back, 
Bathing its snowy tapering within their 

glossy black. 
A tear fell on the orange leaves, rich gem 

and rnimic blossom. 
And fringed robe shook fearfully upon her 

sighing bosom. 20 

"Smile on, smile on," she murmured low, 

" for all is joy around, 
Shadow and sunshine, stainless sky, soft 

airs, and blossomed ground. 
'T is meet the light of heart should smile, 

when nature's smile is fair, 
And melody and fragrance meet, twin sis- 
ters of the air. 

" But ask me not to share with you the 

beauty of the scene, 
The fountain-fall, mosaic walk, and breadths 

of tender green ; 



And point not to the mild blue sky, or 

glorious summer sun, 
I know how very fair is all the hand of God 

has done. 
The hills, the sky, the sunlit cloud, the 

waters leaping forth, 
The swaying trees, the scented flowers, the 

dark green robes of earth, — 30 

I love them well, but I have learned to turn 

aside from all, 
And nevermore my heart must own their 

sweet but fatal thrall. 

" And I could love the noble one whose 

mighty name I bear, 
And closer to my breaking heart his 

princely image wear. 
And I could love our sweet young flower, 

unfolding day by day. 
And taste of that unearthly joy which 

mothers only may, — 
But what am I to cling to these? — A voice 

is in my ear, 
A shadow lingers at my side, the death-wail 

and the bier ! 
The cold and starless night of Death where 

day may never beam. 
The silence and forgetfulness, the sleep that 

hath no dream ! 40 

" God, to leave this fair bright world, and 

more than all to know 
The moment when the Spectral One shall 

strike his fearful blow ; 
To know the day, the very hour, to feel the 

tide roll on, 
To shudder at the gloom before and weep 

the sunshine gone ; 
To count the days, the few short days, of 

light and love and breath 
Between me and the noisome grave, the 

voiceless home of death ! 
Alas ! — if feeling, knowing this, I murmur 

at my doom, 
Let not thy frowning, O my God ! lend dark- 
ness to the tomb. 

" Oh, I have borne my spirit up, and smiled 

amidst the chill 
Remembrance of my certain doom which 

lingers with me still : 50 

I would not cloud my fair child's brow, nor 

let a tear-drop dim 
The eye that met my wedded lord's, lest it 

should sadden him ; 
But there are moments when the strength 

of feeling must have way ; 
That hidden tide of unnamed woe nor fear 

nor love can stay. 
Smile on. smile on, light-hearted ones! Your 

sun of joy is high : 
Smile on, and leave the doomed of Heaven 

alone to weep and die ! " 

A funeral chant was wailing through Vien- 
na's holy pile, 

A coffin with its gorgeous pall was borne 
along the aisle ; 

The drooping flags of many lands waved 
slow above the dead, 

A mighty band of mourners came, a king 
was at its head, — 60 



6o6 



APPENDIX 



A youthful king, with mournful tread, and 

dim and tearful eye ; 
He scarce had dreamed that one so pure as 

his fair bride could die. 
And sad and) long above the throng the 

funeral anthem rung : 
" Mourn for the hope of Austria ! Mourn 

for the loved and young ! " 

The wail went up from other lands, the val- 
leys of the Hun, 
Fair Parma with its orange bowers, and 

hills of vine and sun: 
The lilies of imperial France drooped as the 

sound went by. 
The long lament of cloistered Spain was 

mingled with the cry. 
The dwellers in Colorno's halls, the Slowak 

nt liis C3/VG 
The bowed at the Escurial, the Magyar 

stoutly brave, 7° 

All wept the early stricken flower ; and still 

the anthem rung : 
" Mourn for the pride of Austria ! Mourn 

for the loved and young ! " 



THE FKATEICIDE 

He stood on the brow of the well-known hill. 
Its few gray oaks moan'd over him still ; 
The last of that forest which cast the gloom 
Of its shadow at eve o'er his childhood's 

home ; 
And the beautiful valley beneath him lay 
With its quivering leaves, and its streams 

at play. 
And the sunshine over it all the while 
Like the golden shower of the Eastern isle. 

He knew the rock with its fingering vine. 

And its gray top touch'd by the slant sun- 
shine, lO 

And the delicate stream which crept be- 
neath 

Soft as the flow of an infant's breath; 

And the flowers which lean'd to the West 
wind's sigh. 

Kissing each ripple which glided by ; 

And he knew every valley and wooded 
swell, 

For the visions of childhood are treasured 
well. 

Why shook the old man as his eye glanced 
down 

That narrow ravine where the rude cliffs 
frown, 

With their shaggy brows and their teeth of 
stone. 

And their grim shade back from the sun- 
light thrown? 20 

What saw he there save the dreary glen, 

Where the shy fox crept from the eye of 
men. 

And the great owl sat on the leafy limb 

That the hateful sun might not look on him? 

Fix'd, glassy, and strange was that old man's 

eye. 
As if a spectre were stealing by, 



And glared it still on that narrow dell 
Where thicker and browner the twilight fell; 
Yet at every sigh of the fitful wind. 
Or stirring of leaves in the wood behind, 30 
His wild glance wander'd the landscape 

o'er. 
Then fix'd on that desolate dell once more. 

Oh, who shall tell of the thoughts which 

ran 
Through the dizzied brain of that gray old 

man? 
His childhood's home, and his father's toil, 
And his sister's kiss, and his mother's smile, 
And his brother's laughter and gamesome 

mirth, 
At the village school and the winter hearth ; 
The beautiful thoughts of his early time, 
Ere his heart grew dark with its later 

crime. 40 

And darker and wilder his visions came 
Of the deadly feud and the midnight flame, 
Of the Indian's knife with its slaughter red, 
Of the ghastly forms of the scalpless dead, 
Of his own fierce deeds in that fearful hour 
When the terrible Brandt was forth in 

power, 
And he clasp'd his hands o'er his burning 

eye 
To shadow the vision which glided by. 

It came with the rush of the battle-storm — 
With a brother's shaken and kneeling 

form, 50 

And his prayer for life when a brother's arm 
Was lifted above him for mortal harm, 
And the fiendish curse, and the groan of 

death. 
And the welling of blood, and the gurgling 

breath. 
And the scalp torn off while each nerve 

could feel 
The wrenching hand and the jagged steel ! 

And the old man groan'd — - for he saw, 

again. 
The mangled corse of his kinsman slain, 
As it lay where his hand had hurl'd it then. 
At the shadow' d foot of that fearful glen ! 60 
And it rose erect, with the death-pang grim. 
And pointed its bloodied finger at him ! 
And his heart grew cold — and the curse of 

Cain 
Burn'd like a fire in the old man's brain. 

Oh, had he not seen that spectre rise 
On the blue of the cold Canadian skies? 
From the lakes which sleep in the ancient 

wood. 
It had risen to whisper its tale of blood. 
And follow' d his bark to the sombre shore. 
And glared by night through the wigwam 

door ; 70 

And here, on his own familiar hill, 
It rose on his haunted vision still ! 

Whose corse was that which the morrow's 

sun. 
Through the opening boughs, look'd calmly 

on? 



APPENDIX 



607 



There were those who bent o'er that rigid 

face 
Who well in its darken'd lines might 

trace 
The features of him who, a traitor, fled 
From a brother whose blood himself had 

shed, 
And there, on the spot where he strangely 

died. 
They made the grave of the Fratricide ! 80 



ISABEL 

I DO not love thee, Isabel, and yet thou art 
most fair ! 

I know the tempting of thy lips, the witch- 
craft of thy hair. 

The winsome smile that might beguile the 
shy bird from his tree ; 

But from their spell I know so well, I shake 
my manhood free. 

I might have loved thee, Isabel ; I know I 

should if aught 
Of all thy words and ways had told of one 

unselfish thought ; 
If through the cloud of fashion, the pictured 

veil of art. 
One casual flash had broken warm, earnest 

from the heart. 

But words are idle, Isabel, and if I praise 

or blame. 
Or cheer or warn, it matters not ; thy life 

will be the same ; 
Still free to use, and still abuse, unmindful 

of the harm. 
The fatal gift of beauty, the power to choose 

and charm. 

Then go thy way, fair Isabel, nor heed that 

from thy train 
A doubtful follower falls away, enough will 

still remain. 
But what the long-rebuking years may 

bring to them or thee 
No prophet and no prophet's son am I to 

guess or see. 

I do not love thee, Isabel ; I would as soon 

put on 
A crown of slender frost-work beneath the 

heated sun, 
Or chase the winds of summer, or trust the 

sleeping sea. 
Or lean upon a shadow as think of loving 

thee. 



STANZAS 

Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful one, 
Of brown in the shadow and gold in the 

sun! 
Free should their delicate lustre be thrown 
O'er a forehead more pure than the Parian 

stone : 
Shaming the light of those Orient pearls 
Which bind o'er its whiteness thy soft 

wreathing curls. 



Smile, for thy glance on the mirror is 

thrown. 
And the face of an angel is meeting thine 

own! 
Beautiful creature, I marvel not 
That thy cheek a lovelier tint hath caught ; 
And the kindling light of thine eye hath 

told II 

Of a dearer wealth than the miser's gold. 

Away, away, there is danger here ! 
A terrible phantom is bending near: 
Ghastly and sunken, his rayless eye 
Scowls on thy loveliness scornfully, 
With no human look, with no human 

breath. 
He stands beside thee, the haunter, Death ! 

Fly ! but, alas ! he will follow still, 

Like a moonlight shadow, beyond thy 

will; 20 

In thy noonday walk, in thy midnight 

sleep. 
Close at thy hand will that phantom keep ; 
Still in thine ear shall his whispers be ; 
Woe, that such phantom should follow 

thee! 

In the lighted hall where the dancers go, 

Like beautiful spirits, to and fro ; 

When thy fair arms glance in their stainless 

white. 
Like ivory bathed in still moonlight; 
And not one star in the holy sky 
Hath a clearer light than thine own blue 

eye ! 30 

Oh, then, even then, he will follow thee. 
As the ripple follows the bark at sea ; 
In the soften'd light, in the turning dance. 
He will fix on thine his dead, cold glance; 
The chill of his breath on thy cheek shall 

linger. 
And thy warm blood shrink from his icy 

finger ! 

And yet there is hope. Embrace it now. 
While thy soul is open as thy brow; 
While thy heart is fresh, while its feelings 

still 
Gush clear as the imsoil'd mountain-rill; 40 
And thy smiles are free as the airs of 

spring. 
Greeting and blessing each breathing thing. 

When the after cares of thy life shall 

come. 
When the bud shall wither before its bloom'; 
When thy soul is sick of the emptiness 
And changeful fashion of human bliss : 
When the weary torpor of blighted feeling 
Over thy heart as ice is stealing ; 

Then, when thy spirit is turn'd above. 

By the mild "rebuke of the Chastener's 

love ; 50 

When the hope of that joy in thy heart is 

stirr'd. 
Which eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard, 
Then will that phantom of darkness be 
Gladness, and promise, and bliss to thee. 



6o8 



APPENDIX 



MOGG MEGONE 

This poem was commenced in 1830, but 
did not assume its present shape until four 
years after. It deals with the border strife 
of the early settlers of eastern New Eng- 
land and their savage neighbors; but its 
personages and incidents are mainly ficti- 
tious. Looking at it, at the present time, it 
suggests tlie idea of a big Indian in his war- 
paint strutting about in Sir Walter Scott's 
plaid. 

PART I 

Who stands on that cliff, like a figure of 

stone, 
Unmoving and tall in the light of the 

sky, 
Where the spray of the cataract sparkles 

on high. 
Lonely and sternly, save Mogg Megone ? 
Close to the verge of the rock is he. 
While beneath him the Saco its work is 

doing, 
Hurrying down to its grave, the sea, 
And slow through the rock its pathway 

hewing ! 
Far down, through the mist of the falling 

river. 
Which rises up like an incense ever, lo 
The splintered points of the crags are 

seen. 
With water howling and vexed between. 
While the scooping whirl of the pool be- 
neath 
Seems an open throat, with its granite teeth ! 

But Mogg Megone never trembled yet 

Wherever his eye or his foot was set. 

He is watchful : each form in the moonlight 

dim, 
Of rock or of tree, is seen of him: 
He listens ; each sound from afar is caught, 
The faintest shiver of leaf and limb : 20 
But he sees not the waters, which foam and 

fret. 
Whose moonlit spray has his moccasin 

wet,— 
And the roar of their rushing, he hears it 

not. 

The moonlight, through the open bough 
Of the gnarl'd beech, whose naked root 
Coils like a serpent at his foot, 

Falls, checkered, on the Indian's brow. 

His head is bare, save only where 

Waves in the wind one lock of hair. 
Reserved for him, whoe'er he be, 30 

More mighty than Megone in strife. 
When breast to breast and knee to knee, 

Above the fallen warrior's life 

Gleams, quick and keen, the scalping-knife. 

Megone hath his knife and hatchet and 

gun. 
And his gaudy and tasselled blanket on : 
His knife hath a handle with gold inlaid. 
And magic words on its pohshed blade, — 
'T was the gift of Castine to Mogg Megone, 
For a scalp or twain from the Yeugees torn : 



His gun was the gift of the Tarrantine, 41 

And Modocawando's wives had strung 
The brass and the beads, which tinkle and 

shine 
On the polished breech, and broad bright 
line 
Of beaded wampum around it hung. 

What seeks Megone? His foes are near,-— 

Grey Jocelyn's eye is never sleeping. 
And the garrison lights are burning clear. 
Where Philip's men their watch are keep- 
ing. 
Let him hie him away through the dank 
river fog, 50 

Never rustling the boughs nor displacing 
the rocks. 
For the eyes and the ears which are watch- 
ing for Mogg 
Are keener than those of the wolf or the 
fox. 

He starts, — there's a rustle among the 
leaves : 

Another, — the click of his gun is heard ! 
A footstep, — is it the step of Cleaves, 

With Indian blood on his English sword? 
Steals Harmon down from the sands of 

York, 
With hand of iron and foot of cork ? 
Has Scamman, versed in Indian wile, 60 
For vengeance left his vine-hung isle ? 
Hark ! at that whistle, soft and low, 

How lights the eye of Mogg Megone ! 
A smile gleams o'er his dusky brow, — 

" Boon welcome, Johnny Boniton ! " 

Out steps, with cautious foot and slow, 
And quick, keen glances to and fro. 

The hunted outlaw, Boniton ! 
A low, lean, swarthy man is he. 
With blanket-garb and buskined knee, 70 

And naught of English fashion on ; 
For he hates the race from whence he 

sprung. 
And he couches his words in the Indian 
tongue. 

" Hush, — let the Sachem's voice be weak ; 
The water-rat shall hear him speak, — 
The owl shall whoop in the white man's 

ear. 
That Mogg Megone, with his scalps, is 

here ! " 
He pauses, — dark, over cheek and brow, 
A flush, as of shame, is stealing now : 
" Sachem ! " he says, " let me have the 

land, 80 

Which stretches away upon either hand. 
As far about as my feet can stray 
In the half of a gentle summer's day. 
From the leaping brook to the Saco 

river, — 
And the fair-haired girl thou hast sought of 

me 
Shall sit in the Sachem's wigwam, and be 
The wife of Mogg Megone forever." 

There 's a sudden light in the Indian's 
glance, 
A moment's trace of powerful feeling, 



APPENDIX 



609 



Of love or triumph, or both perchance, 90 
Over his proud, cahn features steal- 
ing. 

•* The words of my father are very good ; 

He shall have the land, and water, and 
wood ; 

And he who harms the Sagamore John, 

Shall feel the knife of Mogg Megone ; 

But the fawn of the Yengees shall sleep on 
my breast, 

And the bird of the clearing shall sing in my 
nest. 

" But, father ! " — and the Indian's hand 

Falls gently on the white man's arm, 
And with a smile as shrewdly bland 100 

As the deep voice is slow and calm, — 
" Where is my father's singing-bird, — 

The sunny eye, and sunset hair? 
I know I have my father's word 

And that his word is good and fair ; 

But will my father tell me where 
Megone shall go and look for his bride? — 
For he sees her not by her father's 
side." 

The dark, stern eye of Boniton 

Flashes over the features of Mogg Me- 
gone, no 
In one of those glances which search 
within ; 

But the stolid calm of the Indian alone 
Eemains where the trace of emotion has 
been. 

" Does the Sachem doubt ? Let him go with 
me. 

And the eyes of the Sachem his bride shall 
see." 

Cautions and slow, with pauses oft, 
And watchful eyes and whispers soft. 
The twain are stealing through the wood, 
Leaving the downward-rushing flood. 
Whose deep and solemn roar behind 120 
Grows fainter on the evening wind. 

Hark ! — is that the angry howl 

Of the wolf, the hills among? — 
Or the hooting of the owl, 

On his leafy cradle swung? — 
Quickly glancing, to and fro, 
Listening to each sound they go 
Round the columns of the pine. 

Indistinct, in shadow, seeming 
Like some old and pillared shrine ; 130 
With the soft and white moonshine. 
Round the foliage-tracery shed 
Of each column's branching head. 

For its lamps of worship gleaming ! 
And the sounds awakened there, 

In the pine-leaves fine and small, 

Soft and sweetly musical, 
By the fingers of the air, 
For the anthem's dying fall 
Lingering round some temple's wall ! 140 
Niche and cornice round and round 
Wailing like the ghost of sound 1 
Is not Nature's worship thus. 

Ceaseless ever, going on ? 
Hath it not a voice for us 

In the thunder, or the tone 



Of the leaf-harp faint and small. 
Speaking to the unsealed ear 
Words of blended love and fear, 

Of the mighty Soul of all ? 150 

Naught had the twain of thoughts like these 
As they wound along through the crowded 

trees. 
Where never had r-:ng the axeman's stroke 
On the gnarled trunk of the rough-barked 

oak; — 
Climbing the dead tree's mossy log, 
Breaking the mesh of the bramble fine, 
Turning aside the wild grapevine, 
And lightly crossing the quaking bog 
Whose surface shakes at the leap of the 

frog, 
And out of whose pools the ghostly fog 160 
Creeps into the chill moonshine ! 

Yet, even that Indian's ear had heard 
The preaching of the Holy Word : 
Sanchekantacket's isle of sand 
Was once his father's hunting land. 
Where zealous Hiacoomes stood, — 
The wild apostle of the wood. 
Shook from his soul the fear of harm, 
And trampled on the Powwaw's charm ; 
Until the wizard's curses hung 170 

Suspended on his palsying tongue, 
And the fierce warrior, grim and tall, 
Trembled before the forest Paul ! 

A cottage hidden in the wood, — 

Red through its seams a light is glowing, 
On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude, 

A narrow lustre throwing. 
"Who's there?" a clear, firm voice de- 
mands ; 
" Hold, Ruth,— 't is I, the Sagamore ! " 
Quick, at the summons, hasty hands 180 

Unclose the bolted door ; 
And on the outlaw's daughter shine 
The flashes of the kindled pine. 

Tall and erect the maiden stands. 
Like some young priestess of the wood. 
The freeborn child of Solitude, 
And bearing still the wild and rude. 
Yet noble trace of Nature's hands. 
Her dark brown cheek has caught its stain 
More from the sunshine than the rain ; 190 
Yet, where her long fair hair is parting, 
A pure white brow into light is starting ; 
And, where the folds of her blanket sever. 
Are neck and a bosom as white as ever 
The foam-wreaths rise on the leaping river. 
But in the convulsive quiver and grip 
Of the muscles around her bloodless lip, 

There is something painful and sad to see ; 
And her eye has a glance more sternly wild 
Than even that of a forest child 200 

In its fearless and untamed freedom 
should be. 
Yet, seldom in hall or covirt are seen 
So queenly a form and so noble a mien, 
As freely and smiling she welcomes them 
there,— 
Her outlawed sire and Mogg Megone : 
" Pray, father, how does thy hunting fare ? 
And, Sachem, say, — does Scamman wear, 



6io 



APPENDIX 



In spite of thy pioniis-e, a scalp of his own ?" 
Hurried and U^ht is the maiden's tone ; 

But a fearful meaning lurks within 210 
Her glance, as it questions the eye of Me- 
gone,— 

An awful meaning of guilt and sni ! — 
The Indian hath opened his blanket, and 

there 
Hangs a human scalp by its long damp 

hair ! 
With hand upraised, with quick-drawn 

breath. 
She meets that ghastly sign of death. 
In one long, glassy, spectral stare 
The enlarging eye is fastened there, 
As if that mesh of pale brown hair 

Had power to change at sight alone, 220 
Even as the fearful locks which wound 
Medusa's fatal forehead round. 

The gazer into stone. 
With such a look Herodias read 
The features of the bleeding head. 
So looked the mad Moor on his dead. 
Or the young Cenci as she stood, 
O'er-dabbled with a father's blood ! 

Look ! — feeling melts that frozen glance. 
It? moves that marble countenance, 230 

As if at once within her strove 
Pity with shame, and hate with love. 
The Past recalls its joy and pain, 
Old memories rise before her brain, — 
The lips which love's embraces met, 
The hand her tears of parting wet. 
The voice whose pleading tones beguiled 
The pleased ear of the forest-child, — 
And tears she may no more repress 
Reveal her lingering tenderness. 240 

Oh, woman wronged can cherish hate 

More deep and dark than manhood may ; 
But when the mockery of Fate 

Hath left Revenge its chosen way, 
And the fell curse, which years have nursed. 
Full on the spoiler's head hath burst, — 
When all her wrong, and shame, and pain. 
Burns fiercely on his heai't and iDrain,— 
Still lingers something of the spell 

Whicli bound her to the traitor's bosom,— 
Still, midst the vengeful fires of hell, 251 

Some flowers of old affection blossom. 

John Boniton's eyebrows together are 

drawn 
With a fierce expression of wrath and 

scorn, — 
He hoarsely whispers, " Ruth, beware ! 

Is this the time to be playing the fool, — 
Crying over a paltry lock of hair. 

Like a love-sick girl at school ? — 
Curse on it ! — an Indian can see and 

hear: 259 

Away, — and prepare our evening cheer !" 

How keenly the Indian is watching now 
Her tearful eye and her varying brow, — 
With a serpent eye, which kindles and 

burns, 
Like a fiery star in the upper air : 
On sire and daughter his fierce glance 

turns : — 



" Has my old white father a scalp to 

spare ? 
For his young one loves the pale brown 
hair 
Of the scalp of an English dog far more 
Than Mogg Megone, or his wigwam floor ; 
Go, — Mogg is wise : he will keep his 
land, — 270 

And Sagamore John, when he feels with 
his hand. 
Shall miss his scalp where it grew before." 

The moment's gust of grief is gone, — 
The lip is clenched, — the tears are 
still,— 
God pity thee, Ruth Boniton ! 

With what a strength of will 
Are nature's feelings in thy breast, 
As with an iron hand, repressed ! 
And how, upon that nameless woe. 
Quick as the pulse can come and go, 280 
While shakes the unsteadfast knee, and 

yet 
The bosom heaves, — the eye is wet, — 
Has thy dark spirit power to stay 
The heart's wild current on its way? 
And whence that baleful strength of 
guile, 
Which over that still working brow 
And tearful eye and cheek can throw 

The mockery of a smile ? 
Warned by her father's blackening frown, 
With one strong effort crushing down 290 
Grief, hate, remorse, she meets again 
The savage murderer's sullen gaze. 
And scarcely look or tone betrays 
How the heart strives beneath its chain. 

" Is the Sachem angry, — angry with Ruth, 
Because she cries with an ache in her 

tooth, — 
Which would make a Sagamore jump and 

cry. 
And look about with a woman's eye ? 
No,— Ruth will sit in the Sachem's door 
And braid the mats for his wigwam 

floor, 300 

And broil his fish and tender fawn, 
And weave his wampum, and grind his 

corn, — 
For she loves the brave and the wise, and 

none 
Are braver and wiser than Mogg Megone ! " 

The Indian's brow is clear once more : 

With grave, calm face, and half-shut eye. 
He sits upon the wigwam floor. 

And watches Ruth go by. 
Intent upon her household care ; 

And ever and anon, the while, 3 10 

Or on the maiden, or her fare, 
Which smokes in grateful promise there, 

Bestows his quiet smile. 

Ah, Mogg Megone ! — what dreams are 
thine. 
But those which love's own fancies 

dress, — 
The sum of Indian happiness ! — 
A wigwam, where the warm sunshine 
Looks in among the groves of pine,— 



APPENDIX 



6ii 



A stream, where, round thy light canoe, 
The trout and sahuon dart in view, 320 

And the fair girl, before thee now, 
Spreading thy mat witli hand of snow, 
Or plying, in the dews of morn. 
Her hoe amidst thy patch of corn, 
Or offering up, at eve, to thee, 
Thy birchen dish of hominy ! 

From the rude board of Boniton, 
Venison and succotash have gone, — 
For long these dwellers of the wood 
Have felt the gnawing want of food. 330 
But untasted of Ruth is the frugal cheer,— 
With head averted, yet ready ear. 
She stands by the side of her austere sire, 
Feeding, at times, the unequal fire 
With the yellow knots of the pitch-pine 

tree, 
Whose flaring light, as they l^indle, falls 
On the cottage-roof, and its black log walls. 
And over its inmates three. 

From Sagamore Boniton's hunting flask 
The fire-water burns at the lip of Me- 

gone : 340 

"Will the Sachem hear what his father 

shall ask ? 
Will he make his mark, that it may be 

known. 
On the speaking-leaf, that he gives the land, 
From the Sachem's own, to his father's 

hand ? " 
The fire-water shines in the Indian's eyes, 
As he rises, the white man's bidding to 

do: 
" Wuttamuttata — weekan ! Mogg is wise,— 
For the water he drinks is strong and 

new, — 
Mogg's heart is great! — will he shut his 

hand, 
When his father asks for a little land ? " — 
With unsteady fingers, the Indian has 

drawn 351 

On the parchment the shape of a hunter's 

bow, 
*' Boon water, — boon water, — Sagamore 

John ! 
Wuttamuttata, — weekan ! our hearts will 

grow ! " 
He drinks yet deeper, — he mutters low, — 
He reels on his bear-skin to and fro, — 
His head falls down on his naked breast, — 
He struggles, and sinks to a drunken rest. 

" Humph — drunk as a beast ! " — and Boni- 
ton's brow 
Is darker than ever with evil thought — 

"The fool has signed his warrant; but 
how 361 

And when shall the deed be wrought ? 

Speak, Ruth ! why, what the devil is there. 

To fix thy gaze in that empty air? — 

Speak, Ruth! by my soul, if I thought that 
tear 

Which shames thyself and our purpose 
here, 

Were shed for that cursed and pale-faced 
dog, 

Whose green scalp hangs from the belt of 
Mogg, 



And whose beastly soul is in Satan's 
keeping ; 
This — this ! " — he dashes his hand upon 370 
The rattling stock of his loaded gun, — 
" Should send thee with him to do thy 
weeping ! " 

" Father ! " — the eye of Boniton 
Sinks at that low, sepulchral tone, 
Hollow and deep, as it were spoken 

By the unmoving tongue of death, — 
Or from some statue's lips had broken, — 

A sound without a breath ! 
" Father !— my life I value less 
Than yonder fool his gaudy dress ; 380 

And how it ends it matters not. 
By heart-break or by rifle-shot ; 
But spare awhile the scoff and threat, — 
Our business is not finished yet." 

" True, true, my girl, — I only meant 
To draw up again the bow unbent. 
Harm thee, my Ruth ! I only sought 
To frighten off thy gloomy thought ; 
Come, — let 's be friends ! " He seeks to 

clasp 
His daughter's cold, damp hand in his. 390 
Ruth startles from her father's grasp, 
As if each nerve and muscle felt. 
Instinctively, the touch of guilt 
Through all their subtle sympathies. 

He points her to the sleeping Mogg: 
" What shall be done with yonder dog? 
Scamman is dead, and revenge is thine, — 
The deed is signed and the land is mine ; 
And this drunken fool is of use no more. 
Save as thy hopeful bridegroom, and sooth, 
'T were Christian mercy to finish him, 

Ruth, 401 

Now, while he lies like a beast on our 

floor, — 
If not for thine, at least for his sake, 
Rather than let the poor dog awake 
To drain my flask, and claim as his bride 
Such a forest devil to run by his side, — 
Such a Wetuomanit as thou wouldst make ! " 

He laughs at his jest. Hush — what is 
there ? — 
The sleeping Indian is striving to rise. 
With his knife in his hand, and glaring 
eyes ! — 410 

" Wagh ! — Mogg will have the pale-face's 
hair, 
For his knife is sharp, and his fingers can 
help 
The hair to pull and the skin to peel, — 
Let him cry like a woman and twist like an 
eel. 
The great Captain Scamman must lose 
his scalp! 
And Ruth, when she sees it, shall dance 

with Mogg." 
His eyes are fixed, — but his lips draw in, — 
With a low, hoarse chuckle, and fiendish 
grin, — 
And he sinks again, like a senseless log. 

Ruth does not speak, — she does not stir ; 420 
But she gazes down on the murderer. 



6l2 



APPENDIX 



Whose broken and dreamful slumbers tell 
Too much for her ear of that deed of hell. 
She sees the knife, with its slaughter red, 
And the dark fingers clenching the bear- 
skin bed ! 
What thoughts of horror and madness whnl 
Through the burning brain of that fallen 
girl ! 

John Boniton lifts his gun to his eye, 
Its niuzzle is close to the Indian's ear,— 

But he drops it again. " Some one may be 
nigh, 430 

And I would not that even the wolves 
should hear." 

He draws his knife from his deer-skin 
belt,— 

Its edge with his fingers is slowly felt ; — 

Kneeling down on one knee, by the In- 
dian's side, 

From his throat he opens the blanket 
wide ; 

And twice or thrice he feebly essays 

A trembling hand with the knife to raise. 

"I cannot," — he mutters, — "did he not 

save 
My life from a cold and wintry grave. 
When the storm came down from Agio- 

chook, 440 

And the north-wind howled, and the tree- 
tops shook, — 
And I strove, in the drifts of the rushing 

snow. 
Till my knees grew weak and I could not 

go, 
And I felt the cold to my vitals creep, 
And my heart's blood stiffen, and pulses 

sleep ! 
I cannot strike him — Ruth Boniton ! 
In the Devil's name, tell me — what 's to be 

done?" 

Oh, when the soul, once pure and high, 
Is stricken down from Virtue's sky, 
As, with the downcast star of morn, 450 
Some gems of light are with it drawn, 
And, through its night of darkness, play 
Some tokens of its primal day. 
Some lofty feelings linger still, — 
The strength to dare, the nerve to meet 
Whatever threatens with defeat 
Its all-indomitable will! — 
But lacks the mean of mind and heart, 
Though eager for the gains of crime. 
Oft, at his chosen place and time, 460 
The strength to l)ear his evil part; 
And, shielded by his very Vice, 
Escapes from Crime by Cowardice. 

Ruth starts erect, — with bloodshot eye. 
And lips drawn tight across her teeth 

Showing their locked embrace beneath. 

In the red firelight : " Mogg must die ! 

Give me the knife ! " The outlaw turns. 
Shuddering in heart and limb away. 

But, fitfully there, the hearth-fire burns, 470 
And he sees on the wall strange shadows 
play. 

A lifted arm, a tremulous blade, 

Are dimly pictured in light and shade, 



Plunging down in the darkness. Hark 

that cry 
Again — and again — he sees it fall, 
That shadowy arm down the lighted 

wall ! 
He hears quick footsteps — a shape flits 

by- 
The door on its rusted hinges creaks : — 
" Ruth — daughter Ruth!" the outlaw 

shrieks. 
But no sound comes back, — he is standing 

alone 480 

By the mangled corse of Mogg Megone I 

PART II 

'T IS morning over Norridgewock, — 
On tree and wigwam, wave and rock. 
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred 
At intervals by breeze and bird. 
And wearing all the hues which glow 
In heaven's own pure and perfect bow. 

That glorious picture of the air, 
Which summer's light-robed angel forms 
On the dark ground of fading storms, 490 

With pencil dipped in sunbeams there,-' 
And, stretching out, on either hand. 
O'er all that wide and unshorn land, 
Till, weary of its gorgeousness, 
The aching and the dazzled eye 
Rests, gladdened, on the calm blue sky, — 

Slumbers the mighty wilderness ! 
The oak, upon the windy hill, 

Its dark green burthen upward heaves — 
The hemlock broods above its rill, 500 

Its cone-like foliage darker still, 

Against the birch's graceful stem. 
And the rough walnut-bough receives 
The sun upon its crowded leaves, 

Each colored like a topaz gem ; 

And the tall maple wears with them 
The coronal, which autumn gives, 

The brief, bright sign of ruin near, 

The hectic of a dying year ! 

The hermit priest, who lingers now 510 
On the Bald Mountain's shrubless brow, 

The gray and thunder-smitten pile 

Which marks afar the Desert Isle, 
While gazing on the scene below, 
May half forget the dreams of home, 
That nightly with his slumbers come, — 
The tranquil skies of sunny France, 
The peasant's harvest song and dance. 
The vines around the hillsides wreathing, 
The soft airs midst their clusters breath- 
ing, 520 
The wings which dipped, the stars which 

shone 
Within thy bosom, blue Garonne ! 
And round the Abbey's shadowed wall. 
At morning spring and even-fall. 

Sweet voices in the still air singing, — 
The chant of many a holy hymn, — 

The solemn bell of vespers ringing,— 
And hallowed torchlight falling dim 
On pictured saint and seraphim ! 
For here beneath him lies unrolled, 530 
Bathed deep in morning's flood of gold, 
A vision gorgeous as the dream 
Of the beatified may seem, 



APPENDIX 



613 



When, as his Church's legends say, 
Born upward ui ecstatic bliss, 

The rapt enthusiast soars away 
Unto a brighter world than this : 
A mortal's glimpse beyond the pale,— 
A moment's lifting of the veil ! 



540 



Far eastward o'er the lovely bay, 
Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay ; 
And gently from that Indian town 
The verdant hillside slopes adown, 
To where the sparkling waters play 

Upon the yellow sands below ; 
And shooting round the winding shores 

Of narrow capes, and isles which lie 

Slumbering to ocean's lullaby, — 
With birchen boat and glancing oars. 

The red men to their fishing go ; 550 

While from their planting ground is borne 
The treasure of the golden corn, 
By laughing girls, whose dark eyes glow 
Wild through the locks which o'erthemflow. 
The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done, 
Sits on her bear-skin in the sun, 
Watching the buskers, with a smile 
For each full ear which swells the pile ; 
And the old chief, who nevermore 
May bend the bow or pull the oar, 560 

Smokes gravely in his wigwam door, 
Or slowly shapes, with axe of stone, 
The arrow-head from flint and bone. 

Beneath the westward turning eye 
A thousand wooded islands lie. 
Gems of the waters ! with each hue 
Of brightness set In ocean's blue. 
Each bears aloft its tuft of trees 

Touched by the pencil of the frost, 
And, with the motion of each breeze, 570 

A moment seen, a moment lost. 

Changing and blent, confused and tossed, 

The brighter with the darker crossed, 
Their thousand tints of beauty glow 
Down in the restless waves below, 

And tremble in the sunny skies, 
As if, from waving bough to bough. 

Flitted the birds of paradise. 
There sleep Placentia's group, and there 
Pere Breteaux marks the hour of prayer ; 
And there, beneath the sea-worn cliff, 581 

On which the Father's hut is seen, 
The Indian stays his rocking skiff. 

And peers the hemlock-boughs between. 
Half trembling, as he seeks to look 
Upon the Jesuit's Cross and Book. 
There, gloomily against the sky 
The Dark Isles rear their summits high ; 
And Desert Eock, abrupt and bare. 
Lifts its gray turrets in the air, 590 

Seen from afar, like some stronghold 
Built by the ocean kings of old ; 
And, faint as smoke-wreath white and thin, 
Swells in the north vast Katahdin : 
And, wandering from its marshy feet. 
The broad Penobscot comes to meet 

And mingle with his own bright bay. 
Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods. 
Arched over by the ancient woods, 
Which Time, in those dim solitudes, 600 

Wielding the dull axe of Decay, 

Alone hath ever shorn away. 



Not thus, within the woods which hide 
The beauty of thy azure tide. 

And with their falling timbers block 
Thy broken currents, Kennebec ! 
Gazes the white man on the wreck 

Of the down-trodden Norridgewock ; 
In one lone village hemmed at length, 
In battle shorn of half their strength, 610 
Turned, like the panther in his lair, 

With his fast-flowing life-blood wet, 
For one last struggle of despair, 

Wounded and faint, but tameless yet ! 
Unreaped, upon the planting lands. 
The scant, neglected harvest stands : 

No shout is there, no dance, no song : 
The aspect of the very child 
Scowls with a meaning sad and wild 

Of bitterness and wrong. 620 

The almost infant Norridgewock 
Essays to lift the tomahawk ; 
And plucks his father's knife away. 
To mimic, in his frightful play. 

The scalping of an Enghsh foe : 
Wreathes on his lip a horrid smile. 
Burns, like a snake's, his small eye, while 

Some bough or sapling meets his blow. 
The fisher, as he drops his line. 
Starts, when he sees the hazels quiver 630 
Along the margin of the river, 
Looks up and down the rippling tide, 
And grasps the firelock at his side. 
For Bomazeen from Tacconock 
Has sent his runners to Norridgewock, 
With tidings that Moulton and Harmon of 
York 

Far up the river have come : 
They have left their boats, they have en- 
tered the wood, 
And filled the depths of the solitude 

With the sound of the ranger's drum. 640 

On the brow of a hill, which slopes to meet 

The flowing river, and bathe its feet ; 

The bare-washed rock, and the drooping 

grass. 
And the creeping vine, as the waters pass, 
A rude and unshapely chapel stands. 
Built up in that wild by unskilled hands, 
Yet the traveller knows it a place of prayer, 
For the holy sign of the cross is there : 
And should he chance at that place to be. 

Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallowed 

day, 650 

When prayers are made and masses are 

said. 
Some for the living and some for the dead, 
Well might that traveller start to see 

The tall dark forms, that take their way 
From the birch canoe, on the river shore, 
And the forest paths, to that chapel door ; 
And marvel to mark the naked knees 

And the dusky foreheads bending there. 
While, in coarse white vesture, over these 

In blessing or in prayer, 660 

Stretching abroad his thin pale hands. 
Like a shrouded ghost, the Jesuit stands. 

Two forms are now in that chapel dim, 
The Jesuit, silent and sad and pale. 
Anxiously heeding some fearful tale, 

Which a stranger Is telling him. 



6i4 



APPENDIX 



That stranger's garb is soiled and torn, 
And wet with dew and loosely worn ; 
Her fair neglected hair falls down 
O'er cheeks with wind and sunshine 
brown ; ^7° 

Yet still, in that disordered face, 
The Jesuit's cautious eye can trace 
Those elements of former grace 
Which, half effaced, seem scarcely less, 
Even now, than perfect loveliness. 

With drooping head, and voice so low 
That scarce it meets the Jesuit's ears, 
While through her clasped fingers flow, 
From the heart's fountain, hot and slow. 

Her penitential tears, — 680 

She tells the story of the woe 

And evil of her years. 

" O father, bear with me ; my heart 
Is sick and death-like, and my brain 
Seems girdled with a fiery chain. 

Whose scorching links will never part, 
And never cool again. 

Bear with me while I speak, but turn 
Away that gentle eye, the while ; 

The fires of guilt more fiercely burn 690 
Beneath its holy smile ; 

For half I fancy I can see 

My mother's sainted look in thee. 

" My dear lost mother ! sad and pale, 

Mournfully sinking day by day. 
And with a hold on life as frail 
As frosted leaves, that, thin and gray. 
Hang feebly on their parent spray. 
And tremble in the gale ; 
Yet watching o'er my childishness 700 

With patient fondness, not the less 
For all the agony which kept 
Her blue eye wakeful, while I slept ; 
And checking every tear and groan 
That haply might have waked my own, 
And bearing still, without offence. 
My idle words, and petulance ; 

Reproving with a tear, and, while 
The tooth of pain was keenly preying 
Upon her very heart, repaying 7'o 

My brief repentance with a smile. 

" Oh, in her meek, forgiving eye 

There was a brightness not of mirth, 
A light whose clear intensity 

Was borrowed not of earth. 
Along her cheek a deepening red 
Told where the feverish hectic fed; 

And yet, each fatal token gave 
To the mild beauty of her face 
A newer and a dearer grace, 720 

Unwarning of the grave. 
'T was like the hue which Autumn gives 
To yonder changed and dying leaves. 

Breathed over by his frosty breath ; 
Scarce can the gazer feel that this 
Is but the spoiler's treacherous kiss, 

The mocking-smile of Death ! 

" Sweet were the tales she used to tell 
When summei"'s eve was dear to us, 

And, fading from the darkening dell, 730 

The glory of the sunset fell 
On wooded Agamenticus, — 



When, sitting by our cottage wall, 
The murmur of the Saco's fall, 

And the south-wind's expiring sighs, 
Came, softly blending, on my ear 
With the low tones I loved to hear: 

Tales of the pure, the good, the wise. 
The holy men and maids of old. 
In the all-sacred pages told ; 740 

Of Eachel, stooped at Haran's fountains, 
Amid her father's thirsty flock. 
Beautiful to her kinsman seeming 
As the bright angels of his dreaming. 

On Padan-aran's holy rock ; 
Of gentle Ruth, and her who kept 

Her awful vigil on the mountains. 
By Israel's virgin daughters wept; 
Of Miriam, with her maidens, singing 

The song for grateful Israel meet, 750 
While every crimson wave was bringing 

Tlie spoils of Egypt at her feet ; 
Of her, Samaria's humble daughter, 

Who paused to hear, beside her well, 

Lessons of love and truth, which fell 
Softly as Shiloh's flowing water ; 

And saw, beneath his pilgrim guise, 
The Promised One, so long foretold 
By holy seer and bard of old, 

Revealed before her wondering eyes ! 760 

" Slowly she faded. Day by day 
Her step grew weaker in our hall, 
And fainter, at each even-fall. 

Her sad voice died away. 
Yet, on her thin, pale lip, the while, 
Sat Resignation's holy smile : 
And even my father checked his tread, 
And hushed his voice, beside her bed : 
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke 
Of her meek eye's imploring look, 770 

The scowl of hate his brow forsook. 

And in his stern and gloomy eye, 
At times, a few unwonted tears 
Wet the dark lashes, which for years 

Hatred and pride had kept so dry. 

" Calm as a child to slumber soothed. 
As if an angel's hand had smoothed 

The still, white features into rest. 
Silent and cold, without a breath 

To stir the drapery on her breast, 780 
Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang, 
The horror of the mortal pang. 
The suffering look her brow had worn, 
The fear, the strife, the anguish gone,— 

She slept at last in death ! 

" Oh, tell me, father, can the dead 
Walk on the earth, and look on us, 

And lay upon the living's head 
Their blessing or their curse? 

For, oh, last night she stood by me, 790 

As I lay beneath the woodland tree ! " 

The Jesuit crosses himself in awe, — 
" Jesu ! what was it my daughter saw? " 

" She came to me last night. 

The dried leaves did not feel her tread; 
She stood by me in the wan moonlight. 

In the white robes of the dead! 
Pale, and very mournfully 



APPENDIX 



6iS 



She bent her light form over me. 

I heard no sound, I felt no breath 800 

Breathe o'er me from that face of death : 

Its blue eyes rested on my own, 

Bayless and cold as eyes of stone ; 

Yet, in their fixed, unchanging gaze, 

Something, which spoke of early days,— 

A sadness in their quiet glai'e. 

As if love's smile. were frozen there, — 

Came o'er me with an icy thrill ; 

O God ! I feel its presence still ! " 

The Jesuit makes the holy sign, — 810 

" How passed the vision, daughter mine? 

" All dimly in the wan moonshine, 
As a wreath of mist will twist and twine. 
And scatter, and melt into tlie light ; 
So scattering, melting on my sight, 

The pale, cold vision passed ; 
But those sad eyes were fixed on mine 

Mournfully to the last." 

" God help thee, daughter, tell me why 
That spirit passed before thine eye ! " 820 

" Father, I know not, save it be 
That deeds of mine have summoned her 
From the unbreathing sepulcln-e. 

To leave her last rebuke with me. 

Ah, woe for me ! my mother died 
Just at the moment when I stood 
Close on the verge of womanhood, 

A child in everything beside ; 

And when my wild heart needed most 

Her gentle counsels, they were lost. 830 

" My father lived a stormy life, 
Of frequent change and daily strife ; 
And — God forgive him ! left his child 
To feel, like him, a freedom wild ; 
To love the red man's dwelling-place. 

The birch boat on his shaded floods. 
The wild excitement of the chase 

Sweeping the ancient woods. 
The camp-fire, blazing on the shore 

Of the still lakes, the clear stream where 

The idle fisher sets his weir, 841 

Or angles in the shade, far more 

Than that restraining awe I felt 
Beneath my gentle mother's care, 

When nightly at her knee I knelt, 
With childhood's simple prayer. 

" There came a change. The wild, glad 
mood 

Of unchecked freedom passed. 
Amid the ancient solitude 
Of unshorn grass and waving wood 850 

And waters glancing bright and fast, 
A softened voice was in my ear, 

Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine 
The hunter lifts his head to hear. 
Now far and faint, now full and near — 

The murmur of the wind-swept pine. 
A manly form was ever nigh, 
A bold, free hunter, with an eye 

Whose dark, keen glance had power to 
wake 
Both fear and love, to awe and charm ; 860 

'T was as the wizard rattlesnake. 



Whose evil glances lure to harm — 
Whose cold and small and glittering eye, 
And brilliant coil, and changing dye. 
Draw, step by step, the gazer near. 
With drooping wing and cry of fear. 
Yet powerless all to turn away, 
A conscious, but a willing prey ! 

" Fear, doubt, thought, life Itself, erelong 
Merged in one feeling deep and strong. 870 
Faded the world which I had known, 

A poor vain shadow, cold and waste ; 
In the warm present bliss alone 

Seemed I of actual life to taste. 
Fond longings dimly understood. 
The glow of passion's quickening blood. 
And cherished fantasies which press 
The young lip with a dream's caress ; 
The heart's forecast and prophecy 
Took form and life before my eye, 880 

Seen in the glance which met my own. 
Heard in the soft and pleading tone, 
Felt in the arms around me cast, 
And warm heart-pulses beating fast. 
Ah ! scarcely yet to God above 
With deeper trust, with stronger love. 
Has prayei'ful saint his meek heart lent, 
Or cloistered nun at twilight bent. 
Than I, before a human shrine. 
As mortal and as frail as mine, 890 

With heart, and soul, and mind, and form, 
Knelt madly to a fellow-worm. 

" Full soon, upon that dream of sin. 
An awful light came bursting in. 
The shrine was cold at which I knelt. 

The idol of that shrine was gone ; 
A humbled thing of shame and guilt. 

Outcast, and spurned and lone, 
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime. 

With withering heart and burning brain, 

And tears that fell like fiery rain, goi 
I passed a fearful time. 

" There came a voice — it checked the 
tear. 

In heart and soul it wrought a change ; 
My father's voice was in my ears ; 

It whispered of revenge ! 
A new and fiercer feeling swept 

All lingering tenderness away ; 
And tiger passions, which had slept 

In childhood's better day, 910 

Unknown, unfelt, arose at length 
In all their own demoniac strength. 

" A youthful warrior of the wild, 
By words deceived, by smiles beguiled, 
Of crime the cheated instrument, ■ 
Upon our fatal errands went. 

Through camp and town and wilderness 
He tracked his victim ; and at last. 
Just when the tide of hate had passed. 
And milder thoughts came warm and fast. 
Exulting, at my feet he cast 921 

The bloody token of success. 

" O God ! with what an awful power 

I saw the buried past uprise. 
And gather, in a single hour, 

Its ghost-like memories ! 



6i6 



APPENDIX 



And tlien I felt, alas ! too late, 

That underneath the mask of hate, 
That shame and guilt and wrong had 

thrown 
O'er feelings which they might not own, 930 

The heart's wild love had known no 
change ; 
And still that deep and hidden love, 
With its first fondness, wept above 

The victim of its own revenge ! 
There lay the fearful scalp, and there 
The blood was on its pale brown hair ! 
I thought not of the victim's scorn, 

I thought not of his baleful guile, 
My deadly wrong, my outcast name, 
The characters of sin and shame 940 

On heart and forehead drawn ; 

I only saw that victim's smile. 
The still green places where we met, — 
The moonlit branches, dewy wet ; 
I only felt, I only heard, 
The greeting and the parting word, — 
The smile, the embrace, the tone, which 
made 

An Eden of the forest shade. 

" And oh, with what a loathing eye, 

With what a deadly hate, and deep, 950 
I saw that Indian murderer lie 

Before me, in his drunken sleep ! 
What though for me the deed was done. 
And words of mine had sped him on ! 
Yet when he murmured, as he slept. 

The horrors of that deed of blood. 
The tide of utter madness swept 

O'er brain and bosom, like a flood, 
And, father, with this hand of mine " — 

"Ha! what didst thou?" the Jesuit 
cries, 960 

Shuddering, as smitten with sudden pani, 

And shading, with one thin hand, his 
eyes, 
With the other he makes the holy sign. 
" — I smote him as I would a worm ; 
With heart as steeled, with nerves as 
firm : 

He never woke again ! " 

" Woman of sin and blood and shame, 
Speak, I would know that victim's name." 

" Father," she gasped, " a chieftain, known 
As Saeo's Sachem, — Mogg Megone ! " 970 

Pale priest ! What proud and lofty dreams. 
What keen desires, what cherished 

schemes, 
What hopes, that time may not recall. 
Are darkened by that chieftain's fall ! 
Was he not pledged, by cross and vow. 

To lift the hatchet of his sire. 
And, round his own, the Church's foe. 

To light the avenging fire ? 
Who now the Tarrantine shall wake. 
For thine and for the Churcli's sake? 980 

Who summon to tlie scene 
Of conquest and unsparing strife. 
And vengeance dearer than his life. 

The fiery-souled Castine ? 
Three backward steps the Jesuit takes, 
His long, thin frame as ague shakes ; 



And loathing hate is in his eye. 
As from )iis lips these words of fear 
Fall hoarsely on the maiden's ear — 

" The soul that sinneth shall surely 
die ! " 990 

She stands, as stands the stricken deer. 
Checked midway in the fearful chase. 

When bursts, upon his eye and ear, 

The gaunt, gray robber, baying near, 
Between him and his hiding-place ; 

While still behind, with yell and blow, 

Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe. 

" Save me, O holy man ! " her cry 
Fills all the void, as if a tongue 
Unseen, from rib and I'after hung, 1000 

Thrilling with mortal agony ; 

Her hands are clasping the Jesuit's knee. 
And her eye looks fearfully into his 
own ; — 

" Off, woman of sin ! nay, touch not me 
With the fingers of blood ; begone ! " 

With a gesture of horror, he spurns the 
form 

That writhes at his feet like a trodden 
worm. 

Ever thus the spirit must. 
Guilty in the sight of Heaven, 
With a keener woe be riven, loio 

For its weak and sinful trust 

In the strength of human dust ; 
And its anguish thrill afresh. 

For each vain reliance given 
To the failing arm of flesh. 



PART III 

Ah, weary Priest! with pale hands pressed 

On thy throbbing brow of pain, 
Baffled in thy life-long quest. 

Overworn with toiling vain. 
How ill thy troubled musings fit 1020 

The holy quiet of a breast 

With the Dove of Peace at rest, 
Sweetly brooding over it. 
Tlioughts are thine which have no part 
With the meek and pure of heart. 
Undisturbed by outward things, 
Eesting in tlie heavenly shade. 
By the overspreading wings 

Of the Blessed Spirit made. 
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong 1030 
Sweep thy heated brain along, 
Fading hopes for whose success 

It were sin to breathe a prayer ; — 
Schemes which Heaven may never bless, — 

Fears which darken to despair. 
Hoary priest ! thy dream is done 
Of a hundred red tribes won 

To the pale of Holy Church ; 
And the heretic o'erthrown. 
And his name no longer known, 1040 

And thy weary brethren turning, 
Joyful from their years of mourning 
'Twixt the altar and the porch. 
Hark ! what sudden sound is heard 

In the wood and in the sky, 
Shriller than the scream of bird. 

Than the trumpet's clang more high.' 



APPENDIX 



617 



Every wolf-cave of the hills, 

Forest arch and mountain gorge, 

Rock and dell, and river verge, 1050 

With an answering echo thrills. 
Well does the Jesuit know that cry, 
Which summons the Norridgewock to 

die, 
And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh. 
He listens, and hears the rangers come, 
With loud hurrah, and jar of drum. 
And hurrying feet (for the chase is hot). 
And the short, sharp sound of rifle shot. 
And taimtand menace, — answered well 
By the Indians' mocking cry and yell, — 1060 
The bark of dogs, — the squaw's mad 

scream, 
The dash of paddles along the stream. 
The whistle of shot as it cuts the leaves 
Of the maples around the church's eaves, 
And the gride of hatchets fiercely thrown 
On wigwam-log and tree and stone. 
Black with the grime of paint and dust. 

Spotted and streaked with human gore, 
A grim and naked head is thrust 

Within the chapel-door. 1070 

" Ha — Bomazeen ! In God's name say. 
What mean these sounds of bloody fray?" 
Silent, the Indian points his hand 

To where across the echoing glen 
Sweep Harmon's dreaded ranger-band, 

And Moulton with his men. 
"Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen? 
Where are De Rouville and Castine, 
And where the braves of Sawga's queen?" 
" Let my father find the winter snow 1080 
Which the sun drank up long moons ago ! 
Under the falls of Tacconock, 
The wolves are eating the Norridgewock ; 
Castine with his wives lies closely hid 
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid ! 
On Sawga's banks the man of war 
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw ; 
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone, 

Struck by tlie knife of Sagamore John, 
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone." logo 

Fearfully over the Jesuit's face. 
Of a thousand thoughts trace after trace, 
Like swift cloud-shadows, each other chase. 
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife, 
For a last vain struggle for cherished 

hfe,— 
The next, he hurls the blade away. 
And kneels at his altar's foot to pray; 
Over his beads his fingers stray, 
And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud 

On the Virgin and her Son ; noo 

For terrible thoughts his memory crowd 

Of evil seen and done. 
Of scalps brought home by his savage flock 
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock 

In the Church's service won. 

No shrift the gloomy savage brooks. 

As scowling on the priest he looks : 

" Cowesass — cowesass — tawhich wessa 

seen? 
Let my father look upon Bomazeen, — 
My father's heart is the heart of a squaw. 
But mine is so hard that it does not 

thaw ; 1 1 1 1 



Let my father ask his God to make 

A dance and a feast for a great sagamore. 
When he paddles across the western lake. 
With his dogs and his squaws to the 
spirit's shore. 
Cowesass — cowesass — tawhich wessa 

seen? 
Let my father die like Bomazeen ! " 

Through the chapel's narrow doors, 

And through each window in the walls. 
Round the priest and warrior pours 1120 

The deadly shower of English balls. 
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls ; 
While at his side the Norridgewock, 
With faihng breath, essays to mock 
And menace yet the hated foe, 
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro 

Exultingly before their eyes. 
Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow, 

Defiant still, he dies. 

" So fare all eaters of the frog ! 1 130 

Death to the Babylonish dog ! 

Down with the beast of Rome ! " 
With shouts like these, around the dead, 
Unconscious on his bloody bed. 

The rangers crowding come. 
Brave men ! the dead priest cannot hear 
The unfeeling taunt, — the brutal jeer ; 
Spurn — for he sees ye not — in wrath, 
The symbol of your Saviour's death ; 

Tear from his death-grasp, in your zeal. 
And trample, as a thing accursed, 1141 

The cross he cherished in the dust : 

The dead man cannot feel ! 

Brutal ahke in deed and word. 

With callous heart and hand of strife, 
How like a fiend may man be made. 
Plying the foul and monstrous trade 

Whose harvest-field is human life, 
Whose sickle is the reeking sword ! 
Quenching, with reckless hand in blood, 1 150 
Sparks kindled by the breath of God ; 
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven, 

Of open guilt or secret sin, 
Before the bar of that pure Heaven 

The holy only enter in ! 
Oh, by the widow's sore distress. 
The orphan's wailing wretchedness. 
By Virtue struggling in the accursed 
Embraces of polluting Lust, 
By the fell discord of the Pit, 1160 

And the pained souls that people it. 
And by the blessed peace which fills 

The Paradise of God forever. 
Resting on all its holy hills. 

And flowing with its crystal river, — 
Let Christian hands no longer bear 

In triumph on his crimson car 

The foul and idol god of war ; 
No more the purple wreaths prepare 
To bind amid his snaky hair; 1170 

Nor Christian bards his glories tell. 
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell. 

Through the gun-smoke wreathing white. 
Glimpses on the soldier's sight 
A thing of human shape I ween, 
For a moment only seen, 



6i8 



APPENDIX 



With its loose hair backward streaming, 
And its eyeballs madly gleaming, 
Shrieking, like a soul in pain, 

From the world of light and breath, 1180 
Hurrying to its place again. 

Spectre-like it vauisheth ! 

Wretched girl ! one eye alone 
Notes tlie way which thou hast gone. 
That great Eye, which slumbers never, 
Watching o'er a lost world ever. 
Tracks tliee over vale and mountain, 
By tlie gusliing foi-est-fountain. 
Plucking from the vine its fruit, 
Searching for the ground-nut's root, 1 190 
Peering in the she-wolf's den. 
Wading through the marshy fen. 
Where the sluggish water-snake 
Baslss beside the sunny brake, 
Coiling in his slimy bed. 
Smooth and cold against thy tread ; 
Purposeless, thy mazy way 
Threading through the lingering day. 
And at night securely sleeping 1 199 

Where the dogwood's dews are weeping ! 
Still, tliough earth and man discard thee, 
Doth thy Heavenly Father guard thee : 
He who spared the guilty Cain, 

Even when a brother's blood. 

Crying in the ear of God, 
Gave the earth its primal stain ; 
He whose mercy ever liveth, , 

Who repenting guilt forgiveth. 
And the broken heart receiveth; 
Wanderer of the wilderness, 12 10 

Haunted, guilty, crazed and wild. 
He regardeth thy distress. 

And careth for his sinful child ! 



'T is springtime on the eastern hills ! 
Like torrents gush the summer rills ; 
Through winter's moss and dry dead 

leaves 
The bladed grass revives and lives. 
Pushes the mouldering waste away. 
For glimpses to the April day. 
In kindly shower and sunshine bud 1220 
The branches of the dull gray wood ; 
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks 
The blue eye of the violet looks ; 

The soutliwest wind is warmly blowing. 
And odors from the springing grass. 
The pine-tree and the sassafras. 

Are with it on its errands going. 

A band is marching through the wood 

Where rolls the Kenneliec his flood ; 

The warriors of the wilderness, 1230 

Painted, and in their battle dress ; 

And with them one whose bearded cheek. 

And white and wrinkled brow, bespeak 

A wanderer from the shores of France. 
A few long locks of scattering snow 
Beneath a battered morion flow. 
And from the rivets of the vest 
Which girds in steel his ample breast. 

The slanted simbeams glance. 
In the harsh outlines of his face 1240 

Passion and sin have left their trace ; 



Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair, 
No signs of weary age are there. 

His step is firm, his eye is keen. 
Nor years in broil and battle spent. 
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent 

The lordly frame of old Castine. 

No purpose now of strife and blood 

Urges the hoary veteran on : 
The fire of conquest and the mood 1250 

Of chivalry have gone. 
A mournful task is his, — to lay 

Within the earth the bones of those 
Who perished in that fearful day. 
When Norridgewock became the prey 

Of all unsparing foes. 
Sadly and still, dark thoughts between. 
Of coming vengeance mused Castine, 
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen, 
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks 1260 
Dig up their buried tomahawks 

For firm defence or swift attack ; 
And him whose friendship formed the tie 

Which held the stern self-exile back 
From lapsing into savagery; 
Whose garb and tone and kindly glance 

Recalled a younger, happier day. 

And prompted memory's fond essay, 

To bridge the mighty waste which lay 

Between his wild home and that gray, 1270 
Tall chateau of his native Fi'ance : 
Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din. 
Ushered his birth-hour gayly in, 
And counted with its solemn toll 
The masses for his father's soul. 

Hark ! from the foremost of the band 

Suddenly bursts the Indian yell ; 
For now on the very spot they stand 

Where the Norridgewocks fighting fell. 
No wigwam smoke is curling there ; 1280 
The very earth is scorched and bare : 
And they pause and listen to catch a sound 

Of breathing life, — but there comes not 
one. 
Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound ; 
Buthere and there,on the blackened ground, 

White bones are glistening in the sun. 
And where the house of prayer arose, 
And the holy hymn, at daylight's close. 
And the aged priest stood up to bless 
The children of the wilderness, 1290 

There is naught save ashes sodden and 
dank ; 

And the birchen boats of the Norridge- 
wock, 

Tethered to tree and stump and rock 
Rotting along the river bank ! 

Blessed Mary ! who is she 
Leaning against that maple-tree? 
The sun upon her face burns hot. 
But the fixed eyelid moveth not ; 
The squirrel's chirp is shrill and clear 
From the dry bough above her ear ; 1300 
Dashing from rock and root its spray. 
Close at her feet the river rushes ; 
The blackbird's wing against her brushes, 
And sweetly through the hazel-bushes 
The robin's mellow music gushes ; 
God save her ! will she sleep alway ? 



APPENDIX 



619 



Castine hath bent him over the sleeper : 
" Wake, daughter, — wake ! " but she stirs 

no hmb : 
The eye that looks on him is fixed and 
dim; 
And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no 
deeper, 13 10 

Until the angel's oath is said, 
And the final blast of the trump goes forth 
To the graves of the sea and the graves of 
earth. 
Ruth Boniton is dead ! 



THE PAST AND COMING YEAR 

Wave of an awful torrent, thronging 

down. 
With all the wealth of centuries, and the 

cold 
Embraces of eternity, o'erstrown 
With the great wrecks of empire, and the old 
Magnificence of nations, who are gone ; 
Thy last, faint murmur- -thy departing sigh, 
Along the shore of being, like a tone 
Thrilling on broken harp-strings, or the 

swell 
Of the chained winds' last whisper, hath 

gone by, 
And thou hast floated from the world of 

breath 10 

To the still guidance of o'ermastering 

Death, 
Thy pilot to eternity. Farewell ! 

Go, swell the throngful past. Go, blend 

with all 
The garnered things of Death; and bear 

with thee 
The treasures of thy pilgrimage, the tall 
And beautiful dreams of Hope, the ministry 
Of Love and high Ambition. Man remains 
To dream again as idly ; and the stains 
Of passion will be visible once more. 
The winged spirit will not be confined 20 
By the experience of thy journey. Mind 
Will struggle in its prison-house, and still. 
With Earth's strong fetters binding it to ill, 
Unfurl the pinions fitted but to soar 
In that pure atmosphere, where spirits 

range — 
The home of high existences — where 

change 
And blighting may not enter. Love again 
Will bloom, a fickle flower, upon the grave 
Of old affections ; and Ambition wave 29 
His eagle-plume most proudly, for the rein 
Of Conscience will be loosened from the soul 
To give his purpose freedom. The control 
Of reason will be changeful, and the ties 
Which gather hearts together, and make up 
The romance of existence, will be rent: 
Yea, poison will be poured in Friendship's 

cup; 
And for Earth's low familiar element. 
Even Love itself forsake its kindred skies. 

But not alone dark visions ! happier things 
Will float above existence, like the wings 40 
Of the starred bird of paradise ; and Love 
Will not be all a dream, or rather prove 



A dream — a sweet forgetf ulness — that 

hath 
No wakeful changes, ending but in Death. 
Yea, pure hearts shall be pledged beneath 

the eyes 
Of the beholding heaven, and in the light 
Of the love-hallowed moon. The quiet Night 
Shall hear that language underneath the 

skies 
Which whispereth above them, as the prayer 
And the deep vow are spolcen. Passing fair 
And gifted creatures, witli the light of truth 
And undebarred affection, as a crown, 52 
Resting upon the beautiful brow of youth. 
Shall smile on stately manhood, kneeling 

down 
Before them, as to Idols. Friendship's hand 
Shall clasp its brothers; and Affection's tear 
Be sanctified with sympathy. The bier 
Of stricken love shall lose the fears, which 

Death 
Giveth his awful woik, and earnest Faith 
Shall look beyond the shadow of the clay, 60 
The pulseless sepulchre, the cold decay ; 
And to the quiet of the spirit-land 
Follow the mourned and lovely. Gifted ones 
Lighting the Heaven of Intellect, lil^e suns, 
Shall wrestle well, with circumstance, and 

bear 
The agony of scorn, the preying care. 
Wedded to burning bosoms ; and go down 
In sorrow to the noteless sepulchre. 
With one lone hope embracing like a crown 
The cold and death-lil^e forehead of Despair, 
That after times shall treasure up their fame 
Even as a proud inheritance and high ; 72 
And beautiful beings love to breathe their 

name 
With the recorded things that never die. 

And thou, gray voyager to the breezeless 

sea 
Of infinite Oblivion — speed thou on ; 
Another gift of time succeedeth thee 
Fresh from the hand of God ; for thou hast 

done 
The errand of thy destiny ; and none 
May dream of thy returning. Go,and bear 80 
Mortality's frail records to thy cold. 
Eternal prison-house ; tlie midnight prayer 
Of suffering bosoms, and the fevered care 
Of worldly hearts; the miser's dream of 

gold ; 
Ambition's grasp at greatness ; the quenched 

light 
Of broken spirits ; the forgiven wrong 
And the abiding curse — ay, bear along 
These wrecks of thy own making. Lo, thy 

knell 
Gathers upon the windy breath of night. 
Its last and faintest echo. Fare thee well ! go 



THE MISSIONARY 

" Say, whose is this fair picture, which 
the light 

From the unshutter'd window rests upon 
Even as a lingering halo ? Beautiful ! 
The keen, fine eye of manhood, and a lip 
Lovely as that of Hylas, and impressed 



620 



APPENDIX 



With the l)rif,'ht signet of some brilliant 

thou^llt ; 

That broad expanse of forehead, clear and 

high, 
Marked visibly with the characters of mind, 
And the free locks around it, raven black, 
Luxuriant and unsilver'd ! — who was 

he?" lo 

A friend, a more than brother. In the 

spring 
And glory of liis being he went forth 
From the embraces of devoted friends, 
From ease and quiet happiness, from 

more — 
From the warm heart that loved him with a 

love 
Holier than earthly passion, and to whom 
The beauty of his spirit shone above 
The charms of perishing nature. He went 

forth 
Strengthened to suffer, gifted to subdue 
The might of human passion, to pass on 20 
Quietly to the sacrifice of all 
The lofty hopes of boyhood, and to turn 
The high ambition written on that brow. 
From its first dream of power and human 

fame. 
Unto a task of seeming lowliness. 
Yet God-like in its purpose. He went forth 
To bind the broken spirit, to pluck back 
The heathen from the wheel of Jugger- 
naut ; 
To place the spiritual image of a God 
Holy and just and true, before the eye 30 
Of tiie dark-minded Brahmin, and unseal 
Tlie holy pages of the Book of Life, 
Fraught with sublimer mysteries than all 
The sacred tomes of Vedas, to unbind 
The widow from her sacrifice, and save 
The perishing infant from the worshipped 

river ! 

" And, lady, where is he ? " He slumbers 

well 
Beneath the shadow of an Indian palm. 
There is no stone above his grave. The 

wind, 
Hot from the desert, as it stirs the leaves 40 
Heavy and long above him, sighs alone 
Over his place of slumber. 

" God forbid 
That he should die alone ! " Nay, not 

alone. 
His God was with him in that last dread 

hour ; 
His great arm underneath him. and His 

smile 
Melting into a spirit full of peace. 
And one kind friend, a human friend, was 

near — 
One whom his teachings and his earnest 

prayers 
Had snatch'd as from the burning. He 

alone 
Felt the last pressure of his failing hand, 50 
Caught tiie last glimpse of his closing eye. 
And laid the green turf over him with 

tears, 
And left him with his God. 



" And was it well, 
Dear lady, that this noble mind should cast 
Its rich gifts on the waters ? That a heart 
Full of all gentleness and truth and love 
Should wither on the suicidal shrine 
Of a mistaken duty ? If I read 
Aright the fine intelligence which fills 
That amplitude of brow, and gazes out 60 
Like an indwelling spirit from that eye, 
He might have borne him loftily among 
The proudest of his land, and with a step 
Unfaltering ever, steadfast and secure, 
Gone up the paths of greatness, — bearing 

still 
A sister spirit with him, as some star. 
Preeminent in Heaven, leads steadily up 
A kindred watcher, with its fainter beams 
Baptized in its great glory. Was it well 
That all this promise of the heart and 

mind 70 

Should perish from the earth, and leave no 

trace. 
Unfolding like the Cereus of the clime 
Which hath its sepulchre, but in the night 
Of pagan desolation — was it well? " 

Thy will be done, O Father ! — it was well. 
What are the honors of a perishing world 
Grasp'd by a palsied finger? the applause 
Of the unthoughtful multitude which 

greets 
The dull ear of decay? the wealth that 

loads 
The bier with costly drapery, and shines 80 
In tinsel on the coffin, and builds up 
The cold substantial monument? Can these 
Bear up the sinking spirit in that hoiu- 
When heart and flesh are failing, and the 

grave 
Is opening under us? Oh, dearer then 
The memory of a kind deed done to him 
Who was our enemy, one grateful tear 
In the meek eye of virtuous suffering, 
One smile call'd up by unseen charity 
On the wan lips of hunger, or one prayer go 
Breathed from the bosom of the penitent — 
The stain'd with crime and outcast, unto 

whom 
Our mild rebuke and tenderness of love 
A merciful God hath bless'd. 

" But, lady, say, 
Did he not sometimes almost sink beneath 
The burden of his toil, and turn aside 
To weep above his sacrifice, and cast 
A sorrowing glance upon his childhood's 

home. 
Still green in memory? Clung not to his 

heart 
Something of earthly hope uncrucified, 100 
Of earthly thought unchastened? Did he 

bring 
Life's warm affections to the sacrifice — 
Its loves, hopes, sorrows — and become as 

one 
Knowing no kindred but a perishing w^orld, 
No love but of the sin-endangered soul, 
No hope but of the winning back to life 
Of the dead nations, and no passing thought 
Save of the errand wherewith he was sent 
As to a martyrdom?" 



APPENDIX 



621 



Nay, though the heart 
Be consecrated to the holiest work 1 10 

Vouchsafed to mortal effort, there will be 
Ties of the earth around it, and, through all 
Its perilous devotion, it must keep 
Its own humanity. And it is well. 
Else why wept He, who with our nature 

veiled 
The spirit of a God, o'er lost Jerusalem, 
And the cold grave of Lazarus ? And why 
In the dim garden rose his earnest prayer, 
That from his lips the cup of suffering 
Might pass, if it were possible ? 

My friend 
Was of a gentle nature, and his heart 121 
Gushed like a river-fountain of the hills, 
Ceaseless and lavish, at a kindly smile, 
A word of welcome, or a tone of love. 
Freely his letters to his friends disclosed 
His yearnings for the quiet haunts of home, 
For love and its companionship, and all 
The blessings left behind him ; yet above 
Its sorrows and its clouds his spirit rose. 
Tearful and yet triumphant, taking hold 130 
Of the eternal promises of God, 
And steadfast in its faith. 

Here are some lines 
Penned in his lonely mission-house and 

sent 
To a dear friend at home who even now 
Lingers above them with a mournful joy, 
Holding them well-nigh sacred as a leaf 
Plucked from the record of a breaking 

heart. 



EVENING IN BURMAH 

A night of wonder ! piled afar 

With ebon feet and crests of snow, 
Like Himalaya's peaks, which bar 140 

The sunset and the sunset's star 

From half the shadowed vale below, 
Volumed and vast the dense clouds lie, 
And over them, and down the sky, 
Paled in the moon, the lightnings go. 

And what a strength of light and shade 

Is chequering all the earth below ! 
And, thi'ough the jungle's verdant braid, 
Of tangled vine and wild reed made. 

What blossoms in the moonlight glow ! 150 
The Indian rose's loveliness, 
The ceiba with its crimson dress. 
The twining myrtle dropped with snow. 

And flitting in the fragrant air, 

Or nesthng in the shadowy trees, 
A thousand bright-hued birds are there — 
Strange plumage, quivering wild and rare, 

WitTi every faintly breathing breeze ; 
And, wet with dew from roses shed, 
The bulbul droops her weary head, 160 

Forgetful of her melodies. 

Uprising from the orange-leaves. 
The tall pagoda's turrets glow ; 
O'er graceful shaft and fretted eaves, 
Its verdant web the myrtle weaves, 



And hangs in flowering wreaths below; 
And where the clustered palms eclipse 
The moonbeams, from its marble lips 

The fountain's silver waters flow. 

Strange beauty fills the earth and air, 170 
The fragrant grove and flowering tree. 

And yet my thoughts are wandering where 

My native rocks lie bleak and bare, 
A weary way beyond the sea. 

The yearning spirit is not here ; 

It lingers on a spot more dear 
Than India's brightest bowers to me. 

Methinks I tread the well-known street — 
The tree my childhood loved is there, 

Its bare-worn roots are at my feet, 180 

And through its open boughs I meet 
White glimpses of the place of prayer ; 

And unforgotten eyes again 

Are glancing through the cottage pane, 
Than Asia's lustrous eyes more fair. 

Oh, holy haunts ! oh childhood's home ! 

Where, now, my wandering heart, is 
thine ? 
Here, where the dusky heathen come 
To bow before the deaf and dumb, 

Dead idols of their own design ; 190 

Where in their worshipped river's tide 
The infant sinks, and on its side 

The widow's funeral altars shine ! 

Here, where, 'mid light and song and flow- 
ers. 

The priceless soul in ruin lies ; 
Lost, dead to all those better powers 
Which link this fallen world of ours 

To God's clear-shining Paradise ; 
And wrong and shame and hideous crime 
Are like the foliage of their clime, 200 

The unshorn growth of centuries ! 

Turn, then, my heart; thy home is 
here ; 

No other now remains for thee : 
The smile of love, and friendship's tear, 
The tones that melted on thine ear. 

The mutual thrill of sympathy, 
The welcome of the household band, 
The pressure of the lip and hand, 

Thou mayst not hear, nor feel, nor see. 

God of my spirit ! Thou, alone, 210 

Who watchest o'er my pillowed head. 
Whose ear is open to the moan 
And sorrowing of thy child, hast known 
The grief which at my heart has fed ; 
The struggle of my soul to rise 
Above its earth-born sympathies ; 
The tears of many a sleepless bed ! 

Oh ! be Thine arm, as it hath been, 
In every test of heart and faith, — 

The tempter's doubt, the wiles of men, 220 

The heathen's scoff, the bosom sin, — 
A helper and a stay beneath ; 

A strength in weakness, through the 
strife 

And anguish of my wasting life — 
My solace and my hope, in death ! 



622 



APPENDIX 



MASSACHUSETTS 

And have they spurned thy word, 

Thou of tlie old Thirteen ! 
Whose soil, where Freedom's blood first 
poured, 
Hatli yet a darker green ? 
To outward patience suffering long 
Is insult added to the wrong? 

And have they closed thy mouth, 

And fixed the padlock fast? 
Dumb as the black slave of tiie South ! 

Is this thy fate at last ? lo 

Oh shame ! thy honored seal and sign 
Trod under hoofs so asiuine ! 

Call from the Capitol 

Thy chosen ones again, 
Unmeet for them the base control • 

Of Slavery's curbing rein ! 
Unmeet for men like them to feel 
The spurring of a rider's heel. 

When votes are things of trade 

And force is argument, 20 

Callback to Quincy's shade 

Thy old man eloquent. 
Why leave him longer striving thus 
With the wild beasts of Ephesus ! 

Back from the Capitol — 

It is no place for thee ! 
Beneath the arch of Heaven's blue wall, 

Thy voice may still be free l 
What power shall chain thy utterance there, 
In God's free sun and freer air? 30 

A voice is calling thee. 

From all the martyr graves 
Of those stern men, in death made free. 

Who could not live as slaves. 
The slumberings of thy honored dead 
Are for thy sake disquieted. 

So let thy Faneuil Hall 

By freemen's feet be trod. 
And give the echoes of its wall 

Once more to Freedom's God ! 
And in the midst unseen shall stand 
The mighty fathers of thy land. 

Thy gathered sons shall feel 

The soul of Adams near, 
And Otis with his fiery zeal, 

And Warren's onward cheer ; 
And heart to heart shall thrill as when 
They moved and spake as living men. 

Not on Potomac's side. 

With treason in thy rear, 50 

Can Freedom's holy cause be tried ; 

Not there, my State, but here. 
Here must thy needed work be done. 
The battle at thy hearth-stone won. 

Proclaim a new crusade 

Against the foes withhi ; 
From l)ar and pulpit, press and trade, 

Cast out the shame and sin. 
Then speak thy now-unheeded word, 
Its lightest whisper shall be heard. 60 



40 



II. POEMS PRINTED IN THE " LIFE 
OF WHITTIER" 

THE HOME-COMING OF THE BRIDE 

Sarah Greenleaf, of eighteen years, 

Stepped lightly her bridegroom's boat 
within. 
Waving mid-river, through smiles and tears, 

A farewell back to her kith and kin. 
With her sweet blue eyes and her new gold 
gown, 

She sat by her stalwart lover's side — 
Oh, never was brought to Haverhill town 

By land or water so fair a bride. 
Glad as the glad autumnal weather. 

The Indian summer so soft and warm. 
They walked through the golden woods to- 
gether. 

His arm the girdle about her form. 

They passed the dam and the gray grist- 
mill, 
Whose walls with the jar of grinding 
shook, 
And crossed, for the moment awed and still, 
The haunted bridge of the Country Brook. 
The great oaks seemed on Job's Hill crown 
To wave in welcome their branches 
strong. 
And an upland streamlet came rippling 
down 
Over root and rock, like a bridal song. 
And lo ! in the midst of a clearing stood 

The rough-built farmhouse, low and lone, 
Wliile all about it the unhewn wood 
Seemed drawing closer to claim its own. 

But the red apples dropped from orchard 

trees. 

The red cock crowed on the low fence rail, 

From the garden hives came the sound of 

bees. 

On the barn floor pealed the smiting flail. 



THE SONG OF THE VERMONTERS, 1779 

Ho — all to the borders ! Vermonters, come 
down. 

With your breeches of deerskin and jackets 
of brown; 

With your red woolen caps, and your moc- 
casins, come, 

To the gathering summons of trumpet and 
drum. 

Come down with your rifles ! Let gray wolf 

and fox 
Howl on in the shade of their primitive 

rocks ; 
Let the bear feed securely from pig-pen and 

stall ; 
Here 's two-legged game for your powder 

and ball. 

On our south came the Dutchmen, envel- 
oped in grease ; 

And arming for battle while canting of 
peace ; 10 



APPENDIX 



623 



On our east, crafty Meshech has gathered 

his band 
To hang up our leaders and eat up our laud. 

Ho — all to the rescue ! For Satan shall work 
No gain for his legions of Hampshire and 

York ! 
They claim our possessions — the pitiful 

knaves — 
The tribute we pay shall be prisons and 

graves ! 

Let Clinton and Ten Broek, with bribes in 

their hands, 
Still seek to divide and parcel our lands ; 
We 've coats for our traitors, whoever they 

are ; 
The warp is of feathers — the filling of tar : 

Does the " old Bay State " threaten ? Does 
Congress complain? 21 

Swarms Hampshire in arms on our borders 
again ? 

Bark the war-dogs of Britain aloud on the 
lake — 

Let 'em come ; what they can they are wel- 
come to take. 

What seek they among us? The pride of 

our wealth 
Is comfort, contentment, and labor, and 

health, 
And lands which, as Freemen, we only 

have trod. 
Independent of all, save the mercies of 

God. 

Yet we owe no allegiance, we bow to no 
throne. 

Our ruler is law, and the law is our own ; 30 

Our leaders themselves are our own fel- 
low-men, 

Who can handle the sword, or the scythe, 
or the pen. 

Our wives are all true, and our daughters 
are fair, 

With their blue eyes of smiles and their 
light flowing hair. 

All brisk at their wheels till the dark even- 
fall, 

Then blithe at the sleigh-ride, the husking, 
and ball ! 

We 've sheep on the hillsides, we 've cows 
on the plain. 

And gay-tasselled corn-fields and rank- 
growing grain ; 

There are deer on the mountains, and 
wood-pigeons fly 

From the crack of our muskets, like clouds 
on the sky. 40 

And there 's fish in our streamlets and rivers 
which take 

Their course from the hills to our broad- 
bosomed lake ; 

Through rock-arched Winooski the salmon 
leaps free. 

And the portly shad follows all fresh from 
the sea. 



Like a sunbeam the pickerel glides through 

the pool. 
And the spotted trout sleeps where the 

water is cool. 
Or darts from his shelter of rock and of 

root 
At the beaver's quick plunge, or the angler's 

pursuit. 

And ours are the mountains, which awfully 
rise, 

Till they rest their green heads on the blue 
of the skies ; 50 

And ours are the forests unwasted, un- 
shorn, 

Save where the wild path of the tempest is 
torn. 

And though savage and wild be this cli- 

nnate of ours, 
And brief be our season of fruits and of 

flowers, 
Far dearer the blast round our mountains 

which raves, 
Than the sweet summer zephyr which 

breathes over slaves ! 

Hurrah for Vermont! For the land which 

we till 
Must have sons to defend her from valley 

and hill ; 
Leave the harvest to rot on the fields where 

it grows, 
And the reaping of wheat for the reaping 

of foes. 60 

From far Michiscom's wild valley, to where 
Toosoonsuck steals down from his wood- 

circled lair, 
From Shocticook River to Lutterlock 

town — 
Ho — all to the rescue ! Vermonters, come 

down ! 

Come York or come Hampshire, come 
traitors or knaves. 

If ye rule o'er our land, ye shall rule o'er 
our graves ; 

Our vow is recorded — our banner un- 
furled, 

In the name of Vermont we defy all the 
world ! 



TO A POETICAL TEIO IN THE CITY 
OF GOTHAM 

Three wise men of Gotham 
Went to sea in a bowl. 

Bards of the island city ! — where of old 
The Dutchman smoked beneath his 
favorite tree, 
And the wild eyes of Indian hunters rolled 
On Hudson plunging in the Tappaan 

Zee, 
Scene of Stuyvesant's might and chivalry. 
And Knickerbocker's fame, — I have made 

bold 
To come before ye, at the present time. 
And reason with ye in the way of rhyme. 



624 



APPENDIX 



Time was when poets kept the quiet tenor 
Of their green pathway through th' Arca- 
dian vale, lo 

Chiming their juusic in the low sweet man- 
ner 
Of song-birds warbling to the " Soft South '" 
gale; 

Wooing the Muse where gentle zephyrs fan 
her, 
Where all is peace and earth may not as- 
sail; 

Telling of lutes and flowers, of love and 
fear, 

Of shepherds, sheep and lambs, and " such 
small deer," 

But ye ! lost recreants— straying from the 
green 
And pleasant vista of your early time. 
With broken lutes and crownless skulls — 
are seen 
Spattering your neighbors with abhorrent 
slime 20 

Of the low world's pollution l^ Ye have 
been 
So long apostates from the Heaven of 
rhyme, 
That of the Muses, every mother's daughter 
Blushes to own such graceless bards e'er 
sought her. 

** Hurrah for Jackson! " is the music now 
Which your cracked lutes have learned 
alone to utter, 
As, crouching in Corruption's shadow low. 
Ye daily sweep them for your bread and 
butter, 2 
Cheered by the applauses of the friends who 
show 
Their heads above the offal of the gutter, 
And, like the trees which Orpheus moved 
at will, 3 1 

Reel, as in token of your matchless skill ! 

Thou son of Scotia ! ^ — nursed beside the 
grave 
Of the proud peasant-minstrel, and to 
whom 
The wild muse of thy mountain dwelling 
gave 
A portion of its spirit, — if the tomb 
Could burst its silence, o'er the Atlantic's 
wave, 
To thee his voice of stern rebuke would 
come. 
Who dared to waken with a master's hand 
The lyre of freedom in a fettered land. 40 

And thou ! — once treading firmly the proud 
deck 

^ Editors of the Mercantile Advertiser and the 
Evening Post in New York, — the present organs 
of Jacksoiiism. 

* Perhaps, after all, they get something better; 
inasmuch as the Heroites have for some time had 
exclusive possession of the Hall of St. Tammany, 
and we have the authority of Halleck tliat — 
"There 's a barrel ot porter in Tammany hall 
And the Bucktails are swigging it all the night long." 

3 James Lawson, Esq., of the Mercaniile. A 
fine, warm-hearted Scotchman, who, having un- 



O'er which thy country's honored flag was 
sleeping. 
Calmly in peace, or to the hostile beck 
Of coming foes in starry splendor sweep- 
ing, — 
Thy graphic tales of battle or of wreck. 
Or lone night-watch in middle ocean keep- 
ing, 
Have made thy Leisure Hours " more 

prized by far 
Than those now spent in Party's wordy 
war.* 

And last, not least, thou ! — now nurtured in 

the land 
Where thy bold-hearted fathers long 

ago 
Rocked Freedom's cradle, till its infant 

hand 5 i 

Strangled the serpent fierceness of its 

foe, — 
Thou, whose clear brow in early time was 

fanned 
By the soft airs which from Castalia 

flow ! 5 — 
Where art thou now ? feeding with hickory 

ladle 
The curs of Faction with thy daily twaddle ! 

Men have looked up to thee, as one to be 

A portion of our glory ; and the light 
And fairy hands of woman beckoned thee 
On to thy laurel guerdon ; and those 
bright 60 

And gifted spirits, whom the broad blue 
sea 
Hath shut from thy communion, bid thee, 
" JVrite," 
Like John of Patmos. Is all this forgotten. 
For Yankee brawls and Carolina cotton ? 

Are autumn's rainbow hues no longer seen ? 
Flows the "Green River" through its 
vale no more ? 
Steals not thy "Rivulet" by its banks of 
green ? 
Wheels upward from its dark and sedgy 
shore 
Thy "Water Fowl" no longer? — that the 
mean 
And vulgar strife, the ranting and the 
7'oar 70 

Extempore, like Bottom's should be thine, — 
Thou feeblest truck-horse in the Hero's 
line ! 

Lost trio ! — turn ye to the minstrel pride 
Of classic Britain. Even effeminate Moore 

Has cast the wine-cup and the lute aside 
For Erin and O'Connell ; and before 

fortunately blundered into Jacksonism, is won- 
dering "how i' the Deil's name" he got there. 
He is the author of a volume entitled Tales and 
Sketches and of the tragedy of Giordano. 

* "William Leggett, Esq., of the Post, a gentle- 
man of good talents, favorably known as the editor 
of the A^eiv York Critic, etc. 

fj William C. Bryant, Esq., well known to the 
public at large as a poet of acknowledged excel- 
lence ; and as a very dull editor to the people of 
New York. 



APPENDIX 



625 



His country's altar, Bulwer breasts the tide 

Of old oppression. Sadly brooding o'er, 
The fate of heroes struggling to be free, 
Even Campbell speaks for Poland. Where 
are ye ? 80 

Hirelings of traitors ! — know ye not that 
men 
Are rousing up around ye to retrieve 
Our country's honor, which too long has 
been 
Debased by those for whom ye daily 
weave 
Your web of fustian ; that from tongue and 
pen 
Of those who o'er our tarnished honor 
grieve, 
Of the pure-hearted and the gifted, come 
Hourly the tokens of your master's doom? 

Turn from their ruin! Dash your chains 
aside ! 
Stand up like men for Liberty and Law, 90 
And free opinion. Check Corruption's pride. 
Soothe the loud storm of fratricidal war, — 
And the bright honors of your eventide 
Shall share the glory which your morning 
saw; 
The patriot's heart shall gladden at your 

name, 
Ye shall be blessed with, and not " damned 
to fame " ! 



ALBUM VEKSES 

Pardon a stranger hand that gives 

Its impress to these gilded leaves. 

As one who graves in idle mood 

An idler's name on rock or wood, 

So in a careless hour I claim 

A page to leave my humble name. 

Accept it ; and when o'er my head 

A Pennsylvanian sky is spread. 

And but in dreams my eye looks back 

On broad and lovely Merrimac, 10 

And on my ear no longer breaks 

The murmuring music which it makes. 

When but in dreams I look again 

On Salisbm-y beach— Grasshopper plain — 

Or Powow stream — or Amesbury mills. 

Or old Crane neck, or Pipestave hills, 

Think of me then as one wlio keeps. 

Where Delaware's broad current sweeps, 

And down its rugged limestone-bed 

The Schuylkill's arrowy flight is sped, 20 

Deep in his heart the scenes which grace 

And glorify his " native place ; " 

Loves every spot to childhood dear, 

And leaves his heart " luitravelled " here ; 

Longs, midst the Dutchman's kraut and 

greens, 
For pumpkin-pie and pork and beans, 
And sighs to think when, sweetly near. 
The soft piano greets his ear, 
That the fair hands which, small and white, 
Glance on its ivory polished light, 30 

Have ne'er an Indian pudding made. 
Nor fashioned rye and Indian bread. 
And oh ! where'er his footsteps turn. 
Whatever stars above him burn, 



Though dwelling where a Yankee's name 
Is coupled with reproach or shame, 
Still true to his New England birth. 
Still faithful to his home and hearth, 
Even 'midst the scornful stranger band 
His boast shall be of Yankee Land. 40 



WHAT STATE STREET SAID TO 
SOUTH CAROLINA, AND WHAT 
SOUTH CAROLINA SAID TO STATE 
STREET 

Muttering "fine upland staple," "prime 
Sea Island finer," 

With cotton bales pictured on either 
retina, 

" Your pardon ! " said State Street to South 
Carolina ; 

" We feel and acknowledge your laws are 
diviner 

Than any promulgated by the thunders of 
Sinai ! 

Sorely pricked in the sensitive conscience 
of business 

We own and repent of our sins of remiss- 
ness : 

Our honor we've yielded, our words we 
have swallowed ; 

And quenching the lights which our fore- 
fathers followed. 

And turning from graves by their memories 
hallowed. 

With teeth on ball-cartridge, and finger on 
trigger. 

Reserved Boston Notions, and sent back a 
nigger ! " 

" Get away ! " cried the Chivalry, busy 

a-drumming. 
And fifing and drilling, and such Quattle- 

bumming ; 
"With your April-fool slave hunt! Just 

wait till December 
Shall see your new Senator stalk through 

the Chamber, 
And Puritan heresy prove neither dumb nor 
Blind in that pestilent Anakim, Sumner ! " 



A FREMONT CAMPAIGN SONG 

Sound now the trumpet warningly I 
The storm is rolling nearer. 
The hour is striking clearer. 
In the dusky dome of sky. 
If dark and wild the morning be, 
A darker morn before us 
Shall fling its shadows o'er us 
If we let the hour go by. 
Sound we then the trumpet chorus I 
Sound the onset wild and high ! 
Country and Liberty ! 
Freedom and Victory ! 
These words shall be our cry, — 
Fremont and Victory ! 

Sound, sound the trumpet fearlessly ! 
Each arm its vigor lending, 
Bravely with wrong contending. 
And shouting Freedom's cry ! 



626 



APPENDIX 



The Kansas homes stand cheerlessly, 
The sky with tianie is ruddy, 20 

The prairie turf is bloody, 

Where the brave and gentle die. 
Sound the trumpet stern and steady! 
Sound the trumpet strong and high ! 

Country and Liberty ! 

Freedom and Victory ! 
These words shall be our cry,— 

Fremont and Victory ! 

Sound now the trumpet cheerily ! 
Nor dream of Heaven's forsaking 30 

The issue of its making, 
That Right with Wrong nuist try. 
The cloud that hung so drearily 
The Northern winds are breaking; 
The Northern Lights are shaking 
Their fire-tlags in the sky. 
Sound the signal of awaking ; 
Sound the onset wild and high ! 
Country and Liberty ! 
Freedom and Victory ! 40 

These words shall be our cry, — 
Fremont and Victory ! 



THE QUAKERS ARE OUT 

Not vainly we waited and counted the 

hours, 
The buds of our hope have all burst into 

flowers. 
No room for misgiving — no loop-hole of 

doubt, — 
We 've heard from the Keystone! The 

Quakers are out. 

The plot has exploded — we 've found out 

the trick ; 
The bribe goes a-begging ; the fusion won't 

stick. 
When the Wide-awake lanterns are shining 

about, 
The rogues stay at home, and the true men 

are out ! 

The good State has broken the cords for 

her spun ; 
Her oil-springs and water won't fuse into 

one; 
The Dutchman has seasoned with Freedom 

his kraut, 
And slow, late, but certain, the Quakers are 

out! 

Give the flags to the winds ! set the hills all 

aflame ! 
Make way for the man with the Patriarch's 

name ! 
Away with misgiving, away with all doubt, 
For Lincoln goes in, when the Quakers are 

out! 



A LEGEND OF THE LAKE 

Should you go to Centre Harbor. 

As haply you some time may. 
Sailing up the Winnepesaukee 

From the hills of Alton Bay, — 



Into the heart of the highlands. 

Into the north wind free, 
Through the rising and vanishing 
islands. 

Over the mountain sea, — 

To the little hamlet lying 

White in its mountain fold, 10 

Asleep by the lake and dreaming 

A dream that is never told, — 

And in the Red Hill's shadow 
Your pilgrim home you make. 

Where the chambers open to sunrise. 
The mountains, and the lake, — 

If the pleasant picture wearies, 
As the fairest sometimes will, 

And the weight of the hills lies on 
you 
And the water is all too still, — 20 

If in vain the peaks of Gunstock 

Reddened with sunrise fire. 
And the sky and the purple mountains 

And the sunset islands tire, — 

If you turn from in-door thrumming 
And the clatter of bowls without, 

And the folly that goes on its travels, 
Bearing the city about, — 

And the cares you left behind you 
Come limiting along your track, 30 

As Blue-Cap in German fable 
Rode on the traveller's pack, — 

Let me tell you a tender story 

Of one who is now no more, 
A tale to haunt like a spirit 

The Winnepesaukee shore, — 

Of one who was brave and gentle. 

And strong for manly strife. 
Riding with cheering and music 

Into the tourney of life. 40 

Faltering and failing midway 
In the Tempter's subtle snare. 

The chains of an evil habit 
He bowed himself to bear. 

Over his fresh young manhood 

The bestial veil was flung, — 
The curse of the wine of Circe, 

The spell her weavers sung. 

Yearly did hill and lakeside 

Their summer idyls frame; 50 

Alone in his darkened dwelling 

He hid his face for shame. 

The music of life's great marches 

Sounded for him m vain ; 
The voices of human duty 

Smote on his ear like pain. 

In vain over island and water 
The curtains of sunset swung ; 

In vain on the beautiful mountains 
The pictures of God were hung. 60 



APPENDIX 



627 



70 



The wretched years crept onward, 

Each sadder than the last ; 
All the bloom of life fell from him, 

All the freshness and greenness past. 

But deep in his heart forever 

And unprofaned he kept 
The love of his saintly mother, 

Who in the graveyard slept. 

His house had no pleasant pictures ; 

Its comfortless walls were bare : 
But the riches of earth and ocean 

Could not purchase his mother's chair. 

The old chair, quaintly carven, 
With oaken arms outspread, 

Whereby, in the long gone twilights, 
His childish prayers were said. 



For thence in his long night watches, 

By moon or starlight dim, 
A face full of love and pity 

And tenderness looked on him. 80 

And oft, as the grieving presence 

Sat in his mother's chair. 
The groan of his self-upbraiding 

Grew into wordless prayer. 

At last, in the moonless midnight. 

The summoning angel came, 
Severe in his pity, touching 

The house with lingers of flame. 

The red light flashed from its win- 
dows 

And flared from its sinking roof; go 
And baffled and awed before it 

The villagers stood aloof. 

They shrank from the falling rafters, 
They turned from the furnace glare ; 

But its tenant cried, " God help me ! 
I must save my mother's chair." 

Under the blazing portal. 

Over the floor of flre, 
He seemed, in the terrible splendor, 

A martyr on his pyre. loo 

In his face the mad flames smote 
him, 

And stung him on either side ; 
But he clung to the sacred relic, — 

By his mother's chair he died ! 

O mother, with human yearnings ! 

O saint, by the altar stairs ! 
Shall not the dear God give thee 

The child of thy many prayers ? 

O Christ ! by whom the loving. 

Though erring, are forgiven, no 

Hast thou for him no refuge. 

No quiet place in heaven ? 

Give palms to thy strong martyrs, 
And crown thy saints with gold. 

But let the mother welcome 
Her lost one to the fold ! 



LETTER TO LUCY LARCOM 

25th, 3d mo., 1866. 

Believe me, Lucy Larcom, it gives me 
real sorrow 

That I cannot take my carpet-bag and go 
to town to-morrow ; 

But I'm "snow-bound," and cold on cold, 
like layers of an onion. 

Have piled my back and weighed me down 
as with the pack of Bunyan. 

The north-east wind is damper and the 
north-west wind is colder, 

Or else the matter simply is that I am grow- 
ing older. 

And then I dare not trust a moon seen over 
one's left shoulder, 

As I saw this with slender horns caught in 
a west hill-pine. 

As on a Stamboul minaret curves the arch- 
impostor's sign,— 

So I must stay in Amesbury, and let you go 
your way. 

And guess what colors greet your eyes, 
what shapes your steps delay ; 

What pictured forms of heathen lore, of god 
and goddess please you. 

What idol graven images you bend your 
wicked knees to. 

But why should I of evil dream, well know- 
ing at your head goes 

That flower of Christian womanhood, our 
dear good Anna Meadows. 

She '11 be discreet, I 'm sure, although once, 
in a freak romantic. 

She flung the Doge's bridal ring, and mar- 
ried "The Atlantic"! 

And spite of all appearances, like the wo- 
man in a shoe, 

She 's got so many " Young Folks " now, 
she don't know what to do. 

But I must say I think it strange that thee 
and Mrs. Spaulding, 

Whose lives with Calvin's five-railed creed 
have been so tightly walled in, 

Should quit your Puritan homes, and take 
the pains to go 

So far, with malice aforethought, to " walk 
in a vain show " .' 

Did Emmons hunt for pictures? Was Jon- 
athan Edwards peeping 

Into the chambers of imagery, with maids 
for Tammuz weeping? 

Ah well ! the times are sadly changed, and 
I myself am feeling 

The wicked world my Quaker coat from off 
my shoulders peeling. 

God grant that in the strange new sea of 
change wherein we swim, 

We still may keep the good old plank, of 
simple faith in Him ! 



LINES ON LEAVING APPLEDORE 

Under the shadow of a cloud, the light 
Died out upon the waters, like a smile 
Chased from a face by grief. Following the 

flight 
Of a lone bird that, scudding with the breeze, 



628 



APPENDIX 



Dipped its crank wing in leaden-colored 

seas, 
I saw in sunshine lifted, clear and bright, 
On the horizon's rim the Fortunate Isle 
That claims thee as its fair inhabitant, 
And glad of heart I whispered, " Be to 

her. 
Bird of the summer sea, my messenger ; 
Tell her, if Heaven a fervent prayer will 

grant, 
This light that falls her Island home above. 
Making its slopes of rock and greenness 

A partial glory midst surrounduig gray, 
Shall prove an earnest of our Father's love, 
More and more shining to the perfect day." 



MRS. CHOATE'S HOUSE-WARMING 

Of rights and of wrongs 
Let the feminine tongues 

Talk on — none forbid it. 
Our hostess best knew 
What her hands found to do, 

Asked no questions, but did it. 

Here the lesson of work. 
Which so many folks shirk. 

Is so plain all may learn it; 
Each brick in tiiis dwelling, 
Each timber is telling, 

If you want a home, earn it. 

The question of labor 

Is solved by our neighbor, 

The old riddle guessed out : 
The wisdom sore needed, 
The truth long unheeded. 

Her flat-iron 's pressed out! 

Thanks, then, to Kate Choate ! 
Let the idle take note 

What their fingers were made for ; 
She, cheerful and jolly. 
Worked on late and early, 

And bought — what she paid for ! 

Never vainly repining. 
Nor begging, nor whining; 

The morning-star twinkles 
On no heart that 's lighter 
As she makes the world whiter 

And smooths out its wrinkles. 

So, long life to Kate ! 
May lier heirs have to wait 

Till they 're gray in attendance ; 
And her flat-iron press on, 
Still teaching its lesson 

Of brave independence! 



AN AUTOGRAPH 

The years that since we met have flown 
Leave as they found me, still alone : 
No wife, nor child, nor grandchild dear. 
Are mine the heart of age to cheer. 
More favored thou, with hair less gray 
Than mine, canst let thy fancy stray 



To where thy little Constance sees 
The prairie ripi)le in the breeze ; 
For one like her to lisp thy name 
Is better than the voice of fame. 



TO LUCY LARCOM 

3d rao., 1870. 

Pray give the " Atlantic " 
A brief unpedantic 
Review of Miss Phelps' book, 
Which teaches and helps folk 
To deal with the offenders 
In love which surrenders 
All pride unforgiving. 
The lost one receiving 
With truthful believing 
That she like all others. 
Our sisters and brothers, 
Is only a sinner 
Whom God's love within her 
Can change to the whiteness 
Of heaven's own brightness. 
For who shall see tarnish 
If He sweep and garnish ? 
When He is the cleanser 
Shall we dare to censure ? 
Say to Fields, if he ask of it, 
I can't take the task of it. 



P. S. — For myself, if I 'm able, 
And half comfortable, 
I shall run for the seashore 
To some place as before, 
Where blunt we at least find 
The teeth of the East wind. 
And spring does not tarry 
As it does at Amesbury ; 
But where it will be to 
I cannot yet see to. 



A FAREWELL 

What shall I say, dear friends, to whom I 

owe 
The choicest blessings, dropping from the 

hands 
Of trustful love and friendship, as you go 
Forth on your journey to tliose older lands, 
By saint and sage and bard and hero trod? 
Scarcely the simple farewell of the Friends 
Sufficeth ; after you my full heart sends 
Such benediction as tlie pilgrim hears 
Where the Greek faith its golden dome up- 

rears. 
From Crimea's roses to Archangel snows. 
The fittest prayer of parting: "Go with 

God ! " 



ON A FLY-LEAF OF LONGFELLOW'S 
POEMS 

Hushed now the sweet consoling tongue 
Of him whose lyre the Muses strung ; 
His last low swan-song has been sung! 



APPENDIX 



629 



His last ! And ours, clear friend, is near ; 
As clouds that rake the mountains here, 
We too shall pass and disappear. 

Yet howsoever changed or tost, 
Not even a wreath of mist is lost, 
No atom can itself exhaust. 

So shall the soul's superior force 
Live on and run its endless course 
In God's unlimited universe. 

And we, whose brief reflections seem 
To fade like clouds from lake and stream. 
Shall brighten in a hoher beam. 



SAMUEL E. SEWALL 

Like that ancestral judge who bore his 
name, 
Faithful to Freedom and to Truth, he 
gave, 
When all the air was hot with wrath and 
blame, 
His youth and manhood to the fettered 
slave. 

And never Woman in her suffering saw 
A helper tender, wise, and brave as he ; 

Lifting lier burden of unrighteous law, 
He shamed the boast of ancient chivalry. 

Noiseless as light that melts the darkness 
is. 

He wrought as duty led and honor bid, 
No trumpet heralds victories like his, — 

The unselfish worker in his work is his. 



LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM 

What shall I wish him? Strength and 

health 
May be abused, and so may wealth. 
Even fame itself may come to be 
But wearing notoriety. 

What better can I ask than this ? — 

A life of brave unselfishness. 

Wisdom for council, eloquence 

For Freedom's need, for Truth's defence. 

The championship of all that 's good, 

The manliest faith in womanhood, 



The steadfast friendship changing not 
With change of time or place or lot, 
Hatred of sin, but not the less 
A heart of pitying tenderness 
And charity, that, suffering long. 
Shames the wrong-doer from his wrong; 
One wish expresses all — that he 
May even as his grandsire be ! 



A DAY'S JOURNEY 

After your pleasant morning travel 
You pause as at a wayside inn. 

And take with grateful hearts your break- 
fast 
Though served in dishes all of tin. 

Then go, while years as hours are counted. 

Until the dial's hand at noon 
Invites you to a dinner table 

Garnished with silver fork and spoon. 

And when the vesper bell to supper 

Is calling, and the day is old. 
May love transmute the tin of morning 

And noonday's silver into gold. 



A FRAGMENT 

The dreadful burden of our sins we feel, 
The pain of wounds which Thou alone canst 

heal. 
To whom our weakness is our strong ap- 
peal. 

From the black depths, the ashes, and the 

dross 
Of our waste lives, we reach out to Thy 

cross, 
And by its fulness measure all our loss ! 

That holy sign reveals Thee: throned 

above 
No Moloch sits, no false, vindictive Jove — 
Thou art our Father, and Thy name is 

Love ! 1 

^ This is an alternative reading which has been 
cancelled : — 

" No lawless Terror dwells in light above. 
Cruel as Moloch, deaf and false as Jove — 
Thou art our Father, and Thy name is Love! " 



NOTES 



[All the notes that are not inclosed in brackets are copied or abridged from notes 
made by Mr. Whittier himself.] 



Page 3. The Vaudois Teacher. 

" The manner in which the Waldneses 
and heretics disseminated their principles 
among the Catholic gentry, was by carry- 
ing with them a box of trinkets, or articles 
of dress. Having entered the houses of 
the gentry and disposed of some of their 
goods, they cautiously intimated that they 
had commodities far more valuable than 
these, — inestimable jewels, which they 
would show if they could be protected 
from the clergy. They would then give 
their purchasers a Bible or Testament ; 
and thereby many Avere deluded into her- 
esy." — jR, Sancho. 

Page 4. The Female Martyr. 

Mary G- ■, aged eighteen, a Sister of 

Charity, died in one of our Atlantic cities, 
during the prevalence of cholera, while in 
voluntary attendance on the sick. 

Page G. Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn. 

The Pythoness of ancient Lynn was the 
redoubtable Moll Pitcher, who lived un- 
der the shadow of High Rock in that 
town, and was sought far and wide for 
her supposed powers of divination. She 
died about 1810. 

Page 10. Pentucket. 

The village of Haverhill on the Merri- 
mac, called by the Indians 'Pentucket, was 
for nearly seventeen years a fi*ontier town, 
and during thirty years endured all the 
horrors of savage warfare. In a paper 
entitled The Border War of 1708, pub- 
lished in my collection of Recreations and 
Miscellanies, I have given a prose narra- 
tive of the surprise of Haverhill. 

Page 11. The Norsemen. 

In the early part of the present century, 
a fragment of a statue, rudely chiselled 
from dark gray stone, was found in the 
town of Bradford, on the Merrimac. Its 
origin must be left entirely to conjecture. 
The fact that the ancient Northmen vis- 
ited New England, some centuries before 
the discoveries of Columbus, is now very 
generally admitted. 

Page lo. St. John. 

[Dr. Francis Parkman has given a de- 
tailed account of this episode in New Eng- 
land history in The Feudal Chiefs of Aca- 
dia, published in The Atlantic Monthly, 
January, February, 1893.] 



Page 25. The New Wife and the 
Old. 

This ballad is founded upon one of the 
marvellous legends connected with the fa- 
mous General Moulton of Hampton, New 
Hampshire, who was regarded by his 
neighbors as a Yankee Faust, in league 
with the adversary. 

Page 27. The Brldal of Penna- 

COOK. 

Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, 
Sachem of Saugus, married a daughter of 
Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chief- 
tain, in 1662. The wedding took place at 
Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the 
ceremonies closed with a great feast. Ac- 
cording to the usages of the chiefs, Passa- 
conaway ordered a select number of his 
men to accompany the newly-married cou- 
ple to the dwelling of the husband, where 
in turn there was another great feast. 
Some time after, the wife of Winnepurkit 
expressing a desire to visit her father's 
house, was permitted to go, accompanied 
by a brave escort of her husband's chief 
men. But when she wished to return, her 
father sent a messenger to Saugus, inform- 
ing her husband, and asking him to come 
and take her away. He returned for an- 
swer that he had escorted his wife to her 
father's house in a style that became a 
chief, and that now if she wished to re- 
turn, her father must send her back in 
the same way. This Passaconaway re- 
fused to do, and it is said that here termi- 
nated the connection of his daughter with 
the Saugus chief. — Vide Morton'' s New 
Canaan. 

Page 31. The Bashaba. 

This was the name which the Indians of 
New England gave to two or three of their 
principal chiefs, to whom all their inferior 
sagamores acknowledged allegiance. Pas- 
saconaway seems to have been one of 
these chiefs. His residence was at Penna- 
cook.^ (Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. III. pp. 21, 
22.) " He was regarded," says Hubbard, 
"as a great sorcerer, and his fame was 
widely spread. It was said of him that 
he could cause a green leaf to grow in 
winter, trees to dance, water to burn, etc. 
He was, undoubtedly, one of those shrewd 
and powerful men whose achievements are 



NOTES 



631 



always regarded by a barbarous people as 
the result of supernatural aid. The Indi- 
ans gave to such the names of Powahs or 
Panisees." 

" The Panisees are men of great courage 
and wisdom, and to these the Devill ap- 
peareth more familiarly than to others." 
— Winslow''s Relation. 

Page 33. With these the household-god. 

" The Indians," says Roger Williams, 
" have a god whom they call Wetuomanit, 
who presides over the household." 

Page 35. In the river scooped by a spir- 
its hands. 

There are rocks in the river at the Falls 
of Amoskeag, in the cavities of which, tra- 
dition says, the Indians formerly stored 
and concealed their corn. 

Page 37. Aukeetamit. 

The Spring God. See Roger Williams's 
Key to the Indian Language. 

Page 39. Mat wonck kunna-monee. 

We shall see thee or her no more. See 
Roger Williams's Key. 

Page 40- Sowanna. 

''The Great South West God." See 
Roger Williams's Observations, etc. 

Page 40. Barclay of Ury. 

Among the earliest converts to the doc- 
trines of Friends in Scotland was Barclay 
of Ury, an old and distinguished soldier, 
who had fought under Gustavus x\dol- 
phus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he be- 
came the object of persecution and abvise 
at the hands of the magistrates and the 
populace. None bore the indignities of 
the mob with greater patience and noble- 
ness of soul than this once proud gentle- 
man and soldier. One of his friends, on 
an occasion of uncommon rudeness, la- 
mented that he should be treated so harshly 
in his old age who had been so honored 
before. "I find more satisfaction," said 
Barclay, " as well as honor, in being thus 
insulted for my religious principles, than 
when, a few years ago, it was usual for the 
magistrates, as I passed the city of Aber- 
deen, to meet me on the road and conduct 
me to public entertainment in their hall, 
and then escort me out again, to gain my 
favor." 

Page 40. As we charged on Tilly'' s line. 

The barbarities of Count de Tilly after 
the siege of Magdeburg made such an 
impression upon our forefathers that the 
phrase "like old Tilly" is still heard 
sometimes in New England of any piece of 
special ferocity. 

Page 43. The Legend of St. Mark. 
• This legend is the subject of a cele- 
brated picture by Tintoretto, of which Mr. 
Rogers possesses the original sketch. The 
slave lies on the ground, amid a crowd of 
spectators, who look on, animated by all 



the various emotions of sympathy, rage, 
terror ; a woman, in front, with a child in 
her arms, has always been admired for the 
lifelike vivacity of her attitude and ex- 
pression. The executioner holds up the 
broken implements ; St. Mark, with a 
headlong movement, seems to rush down 
from heaven in haste to save his worship- 
per. The dramatic grouping in this pic- 
ture is wonderful ; the coloring, in its 
gorgeous depth and harmony, is, in Mr. 
Rogers's sketch, finer than in the picture. 
— Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary 
Art. 

Page 44. Kathleen. 

This ballad was originally published in 
Leaves from Margaret Smith''s Journal, as 
the song of a wandering Milesian school- 
master. In the seventeenth century, slav- 
ery in the New World was by no means 
confined to the natives of Africa. Polit- 
ical offenders and criminals were trans- 
ported by the British government to the 
plantations of Barbadoes and Virginia, 
where they were sold like cattle in the 
market. Kidnapping of free and innocent 
white persons was practised to a consider- 
able extent in the seaports of the United 
Kingdom. 

Page 46. The Well of Loch Maree. 

Pennant, in his " Voyage to the Heb- 
rides," describes the holy well of Loch 
Maree, the waters of which were supposed 
to effect a miraculous cixre of melancholy, 
trouble, and insanity. 

Page 46. The Chapel of the Her- 
mits. 

The incident upon which this poem is 
based is related in a note to Bernardin 
Henri Saint-Fierre'' s Etudes de la Nature. 

"We arrived at the habitation of the 
Hermits a little before they sat down to 
their table, and while they were still at 
church. J. J. Rousseau proposed to me 
to offer up our devotions. The hermits 
were reciting the Litanies of Providence, 
which are remarkably beautiful. After 
we had addressed our prayers to God, and 
the hermits were proceeding to the refec- 
tory, Rousseau said to me, with his heart 
overflowing, ' At this moment I experience 
what is said in the gospel : Where two or 
three are gathered together in my name, there 
am I in the midst of them. There is here a 
feeling of peace and happiness which pene- 
trates the soul.' I said, ' If F^nelon had 
lived, you would have been a Catholic' 
He exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, ' Oh, if 
F^nelon were alive, I would struggle to 
get into his service, even as a lackey ! ' " 

In my sketch of Saint-Pierre, it will be 
seen that I have somewhat antedated the 
period of his old age. At that time he was 
not probably more than fifty. In describ- 



632 



NOTES 



ing him, I have by no means exagg-eratecl 
his own histoxy of his mental condition at 
the period of the story. In the fragmen- 
tary Seqnel to his Studies of Nature, he 
thus speaks of himself : " The ingratitude 
of those of whom I had deserved kindness, 
unexpected family misfortunes, the total 
lose of my small patrimony through enter- 
prises solely undertaken for the benefit of 
my country, the debts under which I lay 
oppressed, the blasting of all my hopes, 
— these combined calamities made dread- 
ful inroads upon my health and reason. 
... I found it impossible to continue in a 
room where there was company, especially 
if the doors were shut. I could not even 
cross an alley in a public garden, if sev- 
eral persons had got together in it. When 
alone, my malady subsided. I felt myself 
likewise at ease in places where I saw 
children only. At the sight of any one 
walking up to the place where I was, I felt 
my whole frame agitated, and retired. I 
often said to myself, ' My sole study has 
been to merit well of mankind ; why do I 
fear them?'" 

He attributes his improved health of 
mind and body to the counsels of his friend, 
J. J. Rousseau. " I renounced," says he, 
"my books. I threw my eyes upon the 
works of nature, which spake to all my 
senses a language which neither time 
nor nations have it in their power to alter. 
Thenceforth my histories and my journals 
were the herbage of the fields and mea- 
dows. My thoughts did not go forth 
painfully after them, as in the case of 
human systems ; biit their thoughts, un- 
der a thousand engaging forms, quietly 
sought me. In these I studied, without 
effort, the laws of that Universal Wisdom 
which had surrounded me from the cradle, 
but on which heretofore I had bestowed 
little attention." 

Speaking of Rousseau, he says: "I de- 
rived inexpressible satisfaction from his 
society. What I prized still more than his 
genius, was his probity. He was one of 
the few literary characters, tried in the 
furnace of affliction, to whom you could, 
with perfect security, confide your most 
secret thoughts. . . . Even when he de- 
viated, and became the victim of himself 
or of others, he could forget his own mis- 
ery in devotion to the welfare of mankind. 
He was uniformly the advocate of the 
miserable. There might be inscribed on 
his tomb these affecting words from that 
Book of which he carried always about 
him some select passages, during the last 
years of his life : His sins, which are many, 
are forgiven, for he loved muchy 

Page 4t). Like that the gray-haired sea- 
king 2)assed. 



Dr. Hooker, who accompanied Sir James 
Ross in his expedition of 1841, thus de- 
scribes the appearance of that unknown 
land of frost and fire which was seen in 
latitude 77- south, — a stui^endous chain of 
mountains, the whole mass of which, from 
its highest point to the ocean, was covered 
with evei'lasting snow and ice : — 

'' The water and the sky were both as 
blue, or rather more intensely blue, than I 
have ever seen them in the tropics, and all 
the coast was one mass of dazzlingly beau- 
tiful peaks of snow, which, when the sun 
approached the horizon, reflected the most 
brilliant tints of golden yellow and scarlet ; 
and then, to see the dark cloud of smoke, 
tinged with flame, rising from the volcano 
in a perfect unbroken column, one side jet- 
black, the other giving back the colors of 
the sun, sometimes turning off" at a right 
angle by some current of wind, and stretch- 
ing many miles to leeward ! This was a 
sight so suri^assing everything that can be 
imagined, and so heightened by the con- 
sciousness that we had penetrated, under 
the guidance of our commander, into 
regions far beyond what was ever deemed 
practicable, that it caused a feeling of awe 
to steal over us at the consideration of our 
own comparative insignificance and help- 
lessness, and at the same time an inde- 
scribable feeling of the greatness of the 
Creator in the Avorks of his hand." 

Page 66. Skipper Ireson's Rlde. 

In the valuable and carefully prepared 
History of Marblehead, published in 1879 
by Samuel Roads, Jr., it is stated that the 
crew of Cai^tain Ireson, rather than him- 
self, were responsible for the abandonment 
of the disabled vessel. To screen them- 
selves they charged their captain with 
the crime. In writing to Mr. Roads, the 
author of the ballad said : "I have now no 
doubt that thy version of Skipper Ireson's 
ride is the correct one. My verse was 
founded solely on a fragment of rhyme 
which I heard from one of my early school- 
mates, a native of Marblehead. I sup- 
posed the story to which it referred dated 
back at least a century. I knew nothing 
of the participators, and the narrative of 
the ballad was pure fancy. I am glad for 
the sake of truth and justice that the real 
facts are given in thy book." 

Page 70. Telling the Bees. 

A remarkable custom, brought from the 
Old Country, formerly i3revailed in the 
rural districts of New England. On the 
death of a member of the family, the bees 
were at once informed of the event, and 
their hives dressed in mourning. This 
ceremonial was supposed to be necessary 
to prevent the swarms from leaving their 
hives and seeking a new home. [The 



NOTES 



^33 



scene is minutely that of the Whittier 
homestead.] 

Pag-e 72. The Swan Song of Parson 
Avery. 

In Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts 
Bay from 1G23 to 1636 may be found An- 
thony Thacher's Narrative of his Ship- 
wreck. Thaeher was Avery's companion 
and survived to tell the tale. Mather's 
Magnalia, iii. 2, gives further Particulars 
of Parson Avery'' s End. 

Page 84. The Preacher. 

George Whitefield died in Newburyport 
in 1770, and was buried under the church 
which has since borne his name. 

Page 94. Cobbler Keezar's Vision. 

This ballad was written on the occasion 
of a Horticultural Festival. Cobbler Kee- 
zar was a noted character among the first 
settlers in the valley of tlie Merrimac. 

Page 126. The Pennsylvania Pil- 
grim. 

The beginning of German emigration to 
America may be traced to the personal 
influence of William Penn, who in 1677 
visited the Continent, and made the ac- 
quaintance of an intelligent and highly 
cultivated circle of Pietists, or Mystics, 
who, reviving in the seventeenth century 
the spiritual faith and worship of Tauler 
and the ''Friends of God" in the four- 
teenth, gathered about the pastor Spener, 
and the young and beautiful Eleonora 
Johanna Von Merlau. In this circle origi- 
nated the Frankfort Land Company, 
which bought of William Penn, the Gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania, a tract of land near 
the new city of Philadelphia. 

The company's agent in the New World 
was a rising young lawyer, Francis Daniel 
Pastorius, son of Judge Pastorius, of Wind- 
sheim, who, at the age of seventeen, en- 
tered the University of Altorf . He studied 
law at Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at 
Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial Govern- 
ment, obtained a practical knowledge of 
international polity. Successful in all his 
examinations and disputations, he received 
the degree of Doctor of Law at Nurem- 
berg in 1676. In 1679 he was a law lec- 
turer at Frankfort, where he became 
deeply interested in the teachings of Dr. 
Spener. In 1680-81 he travelled in France, 
England, Ireland, and Italy with his friend 
Herr Von Rodeck. In 1683, in company 
with a small number of German Friends, 
he emigrated to America, settling upon 
the Frankfort Company's tract between 
the Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers. 
The township was divided into four ham- 
lets, namely, Germantown, Krisheim, Cre- 
field, and Sommerhausen. Soon after his 
arrival he united himself with the Society 
of Friends, and became one of its most able 



and devoted members, as well as the re- 
cognized head and lawgiver of the settle- 
ment. He married, two years after his 
arrival, Anneke (Anna), daughter of Dr. 
Klosterman, of Muhlheim. 

In the year 1688 he drew up a memorial 
against slaveholding, which was adopted 
by the Germantown Friends and sent up 
to the Monthly Meeting, and 
the Yearly Meeting at Philadei 
noteworthy as the first protest •! 
religious body against Negr . ;i 

The original document was di '* >•, 

1844 by the Philadelphia antiquarian, i>a- 
than Kite, and published in The Friend 
(Vol. XVIII. No. 16). It is a bold and 
direct appeal to the best instincts of the 
heart. "Have not," he asks, " these ne- 
groes as much right to fight for their free- 
dom as you have to keep them slaves ? " 

Under the wise direction of Pastorius, 
the Germantown settlement grew and 
prospei'ed. The inhabitants planted or- 
chards and vineyards, and surrounded 
themselves with souvenirs of their old 
home. A large number of them were 
linen-weavers, as well as small farmers. 
The Quakers Avere the jirincipal sect, but 
men of all religions were tolerated, and 
lived together in harmony, 

Pastorius seems to have been on inti- 
mate terms with William Penn, Thomas 
Lloyd, Chief Justice Logan, Thomas 
Story, and other leading men in the Pro- 
vince belonging to his own religious soci- 
ety, as also with Kelpius, the learned 
Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the pas- 
tor of the Swedes' church, and the leaders 
of the Mennonites. He wrote a description 
of Pennsylvania, which was published at 
Frankfort and Leipsic in 1700 and 1701. 
His Lives of the Saints, etc., written in 
German and dedicated to Professor 
Schurmberg, his old teacher, was published 
in 1690. He left behind him many unpub- 
lished manuscripts covering a very wide 
range of subjects, most of which are now 
lost. One huge manuscript folio, entitled 
Hive Beestock, Melliotropheum Alucar, or 
Rusca Apium, still remains, containing one 
thousand pages with about one hundred 
lines to a page. It is a medley of know- 
ledge and fancy, history, philosophy, and 
poetry, written in seven languages. A 
large portion of his poetry is devoted to 
the pleasures of gardening, the description 
of flowers, and the care of bees. The 
following specimen of his punning Latin is 
addressed to an orchard-pilferer : — 

" Quisquis in hsec furtim reptas viridaria nostra 
Taiigere fallaci poma caveto nianu, 
Si non obsequeris faxit Deus omue quod opto, 
Cum malis uostris ut mala cuncta feras." 



634 



NOTES 



Professor Oswald Seidenstecker , to whose 
papers in Der Deutsche Pioneer and that 
able periodical The Fenn Monthly, of Phil- 
adelphia, 1 am indebted for many of the 
foregoing facts in regard to tlie German 
pilgi-ims of the New World, thus closes his 
notice of Pastorius : — 

"No tombstone, not even a record of bur- 
ial, indicates where his remains have found 
their last resting-place, and the pardon- 
able desire to associate the homage due to 
this distinguished man with some visible 
I'lemento cannot be gratified. There is no 
reason to suppose that he was interred in 
any other place than the Friends' old bury- 
ing-ground in Germantown, though the 
fact is not attested by any definite source 
of information. After all, this obliter- 
ation of the last trace of his earthly exist- 
ence is but typical of what has overtaken 
the times which he represents ; that Ger- 
mantown which he founded, which saw 
him live and move, is at present but a 
quaint idyl of the past, almost a myth, 
barely remembered and little cared for by 
the keener race that has succeeded." 

Page 128. As once he heard in sweet Von 
Merlauh bowers. 

Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau, or, as 
Sewall the Quaker Historian gives it, Von 
Merlane, a noble young lady of Frankfort, 
seems to have held among the Mystics of 
that city very much such a position as 
Annia Maria Schurmaus did among the 
Labadists of Holland. 

Page 130. Or painful Kelpius from his 
hermit den. 

Magister Johann Kelpius, a graduate 
of the University of Helmstadt, came to 
Pennsylvania in 1G94, with a company of 
German Mystics. They made their home 
in the woods on the Wissahickon, a little 
west of the Quaker settlement of German- 
town. Kelpius was a believer in the near 
approach of the Millennium, and was a 
devout student of tlie Book of Revelation, 
and the Morgen-Rothe of Jacob Behmen. 
He called his settlement "The Woman 
in the Wilderness" {Das Weih in der 
Wueste). He was only twenty-four years 
of age when he came to America, but his 
gravity, learning, and devotion placed him 
at the head of the settlement. He disliked 
the Quakers, because he thought they were 
too exclusive in the matter of ministers. 
He was, like most of the Mystics, opposed 
to the severe doctrinal views of Calvin and 
even Luther, declaring " that he could as 
little agree with the Damnamus of the 
Augsburg Confession as with the Anathema 
of the Council of Trent." 

He died in 1704, sitting in his little gar- 
den surrounded by his grieving disciples. 
Previous to his death it is said that he 



cast his famous " Stone of Wisdom " into 
the river, where that mystic souvenir of 
the times of Van Helmont, Paracelsus, 
and Agrippa has lain ever since, undis- 
turbed. 

Page 131. Or Sluyter, saintly familist. 

Peter Sluyter, or Schluter, a native of 
Wesel, united himself with the sect of 
Labadists, who believed in the Divine 
commission of John de Labadie, a Roman 
Catholic priest converted to Protestant- 
ism, enthusiastic, eloquent, and evidently 
sincere in his special calling and election 
to separate the true and living members of 
the Church of Christ from the formalism 
and hypocrisy of the ruling sects. George 
Keith and Robert Barclay visited him at 
Amsterdam and afterward at the com- 
munities of Herford and Wieward ; and, 
according to Gerard Croes, found him so 
near to them on some points, that they 
offered to take him into the Society of 
Friends. This offer, if it was really made, 
which is certainly doubtful, was, happily 
for the Friends at least, declined. Invited 
to Herford in Westphalia by Elizabeth, 
daughter of the Elector Palatine, Labadie 
and his followers preached incessantly, 
and succeeded in arousing a wild enthusi- 
asm among the people, who neglected their 
business and gave way to excitements and 
strange practices. Labadie died in 1674 at 
Altona, in Denmark, maintaining his tes- 
timonies to the last. 

Li 1679, Peter Sluyter and Jasper Dan- 
kers were sent to America by the com- 
munity at the Castle of Wieward. Their 
journal, translated from the Dutch and 
edited by Henry C. Murphy, has been re- 
cently published by the Long Island His- 
torical Society. They made some con- 
verts, and among them was the eldest son 
of Hermanns, the proprietor of a rich tract 
of land at the head of Chesapeake Bay, 
known as Bohemia Manor. Sluyter ob- 
tained a grant of this tract, and established 
upon it a community numbering at one 
time a hundred souls. Very contradictory 
statements are on record regarding his 
headship of this spiritual family, the dis- 
cipline of which seems to have been of 
more than monastic severity. He evinces 
in his journal an overweening spiritual 
pride, and speaks contemptuously of other 
professors, especially the Quakers whom 
he met in his travels. His journal shows 
him to have been destitute of common 
gratitude and Christian charity. He threw 
himself upon the generous hospitality of 
the Friends wherever he went, and repaid 
their kindness by the coarsest abuse and 
misrepresentation. 

Page 131. His long-disused and half- 
forgotten lore. 



NOTES 



635 



Among the pioneer Friends were many 
men of learning and broad and liberal 
views. Penn was conversant with every 
department of literature and philosophy. 
Thomas Lloyd was a ripe and rare scholar. 
The great Loganian Library of Philadel- 
phia bears witness to the varied learning 
and classical taste of its donor, James 
Logan. Thomas Story, member of the 
Council of State, Master of the Rolls, and 
Commissioner of Claims under William 
Penn, and an able minister of his Society, 
took a deep interest in scientific questions, 
and in a letter to his friend Logan, written 
while on a religious visit to Great Britain, 
seems to have anticipated the conclusion 
of modern geologists. " I spent," he says, 
" some months, especially at Scarborough, 
during the season attending meetings, at 
whose high cliffs and the variety of strata 
therein and their several positions I further 
learned and was confirmed in some things, 
— that the earth is of much older date as 
to the beginning of it than the time as- 
signed in the Holy Scriptures as commonly 
understood, which is suited to the com- 
mon capacities of mankind, as to six days 
of progressive work, by which I under- 
stand certain long and competent periods 
of time, and not natural days." It was 
sometimes made a matter of reproach by 
the Anabaptists and other sects, that the 
Quakers read profane writings and phi- 
losophies, and that they quoted heathen 
moralists in support of their views. 

Page 132. As still in Hemskerclc's 
Quaker Meeting. 

The Quaker^s Meeting, a painting by 
E. Hemskerck (supposed to be Egbert 
Hemskerck the younger, son of Egbert 
Hemskerck the old), in which William 
Penn and others — among them Charles 
II. or the Duke of York — are repre- 
sented along with the rudest and most 
stolid class of the British rural population 
at that period. Whatever was strange 
and uncommon attracted Hemskerck 's 
free pencil. Judging from the portrait of 
Penn, he must have drawn his faces, fig- 
ures, and costumes from life, although 
there may be sonaething of caricature in 
the convulsed attitudes of two or three of 
the figures. 

Page 134. The Indian from his face 
washed all his war-paint off. 

In one of his letters addressed to his 
friends in Germany Pastorius says : 
" These wild men, who never in their life 
heard Christ's teachings about temperance 
and contentment, herein far surpass the 
Christians. They live far more contented 
and unconcerned for the morrow. They 
do not overreach in trade. They know 
nothing of our everlasting pomp and styl- 



ishness. They neither curse nor swear, 
are temperate in food and drink, and if 
any of them get drunk, the mouth-Chris- 
tians are at fault, who, for the sake of ac- 
cursed lucre, sell them strong drink." 

Again he wrote in 1698 to his father 
that he finds the Indians reasonable peo- 
ple, willing to accept good t ' ' ' 
manners, evincing an inward \ 
God, and more eager, in f ac 
stand things divine than manj ■■;;.•. ...i 
who in the pulpit teach Chri .1 '•■'!, 
but by ungodly life deny him. 

''It is evident," says Professor Seiden- 
stecker, " Pastorius holds up the Indian 
as Nature's unspoiled child to the eyes of 
the 'European Babel,' somewhat after 
the same manner in which Tacitus used 
the barbarian Germani to shame his de- 
generate countrymen." 

Page 139. To-morrow shall bring another 
day. 

A common saying of Valdemar ; hence 
his sobriquet Alterdag. 

Page 144. Conductor Bradley. 

A railway conductor who lost his life 
in an accident on a Connecticut railway, 
May 9, 1873. 

Page 150. The Dead Feast of the 

KOL-FOLK. 

See Tylor's Primitive Culture, vol. ii. 
pp. 32, 33. Also Journal of Asiatic So- 
ciety, vol. iv. p. 795. 

Page 152. The King's Missive. 

This ballad, originally written for The 
Memorial History of Boston, describes, 
with pardonable poetic license, a memor- 
able incident in the annals of the city. 
The interview between Shattuck and the 
Governor took place, I have since learned, 
in the residence of the latter, and not in 
the Council Chamber. 

Page IGO. How the Women went 
FROM Dover. 

The warrant issued by Major Waldron 
of Dover, December 22, 1662, to the con- 
stables of eleven towns, for the punish- 
ment of three "vagabond Quakers," as 
described in the poem, was executed only 
in Dover and Hampton. At Salisbury the 
constable refused to obey it. He was sus- 
tained by the town's people, Avho w^ere 
under the influence of Major Robert Pike, 
who stood far in advance of his time, as 
an advocate of religious freedom. 

Page 173. The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood.- 

The celebrated Captain Smith, after re- 
signing the government of the Colony in 
Virginia, in his capacity of " Admiral of 
New England," made a careful survey of 
the coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, in 
the summer of 1614. 

Page 173. The sweetest name in all his 
story. 



636 



NOTES 



Captain Smith save to the promontory 
now called Cape Ann the name of Traga- 
bizanda, in memory of his young and beau- 
tiful mistress of that name, who, while he 
was a captive at Constantinople, like Des- 
demona, "loved him for the dangers he 
liad passed.-' 

Page 17(>. Upon the Smile of God. 

Winnipiseogee : "ISmile of the Great 
Spirit."' 

Page 1S9. The Old Bukying-Ground. 

This poem was written with a thought 
of the ancient cemetery at East Haverhill, 
near Rocks Village. 

Page 204. St. Martin's Summer. 

This name in some parts of Europe is 
given to the season we call Indian Sum- 
mer, in honor of the good St. Martin. The 
title of the poem was suggested by the fact 
that the day it refers to was the exact date 
of the Saint's birth, the 11th of November. 

Page 21'J. Ove?- Sihmah''s vine. 

" O vine of Sibmah ! I will weep for thee 
Avith the weeping of Jazer ! " Jeremiah., 
xlviii. 32. 

Page 214. 
Even as the great Augustine 

Questioned earth and sea and sky. 

'' Interrogavi Terram," etc. August. 
Soli log. Cap. xxxi. 

Page 215. Leggett's Monument. 

William Leggett, who died in 1839 at 
the age of thirty-seven, was the intrepid 
editor of the New York Evening Post and 
afterwards of The Plain Dealer. 

Page 216. Lucy Hooper. 

Lucy Hooper died at Brooklyn, L. I., 
on the 1st of 8th mo., 1841, aged twenty- 
four years. 

Page 218. Follen. 

Charles Follen, one of the noblest con- 
tributions of Germany to American citi- 
zenship, was at an early age driven from 
his professorship in the University of Jena, 
and compelled to seek shelter in Switzer- 
land, on account of his liberal political 
opinions. He became Professor of Civil 
Law in the University of Basle. The gov- 
ernments of Prussia, Austria, and Russia 
united in demanding his delivery as a 
political offender ; and, in consequence, he 
left Switzerland, and came to the United 
States. He early became a member of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, and by so 
doing lost his Harvard professorship. He 
perished in the ill-fated steamer Lexing- 
ton, which was burned on its passage from 
New York, January 13, 1840. The few 
writings left behind him show him to have 
been a profound thinker of rare spiritual 
insight. 

Page 220. Chalkley Hall. 

Chalkley Hall, near Frankford, Pa., the 
residence of Thomas Chalkley, an emi- 



nent minister of the Friends' denomina- 
tion. He was one of the early settlers of 
the Colony, and his Journal, which was 
published in 1749, j^resents a quaint but 
beautiful picture of a life of unostentatious 
and simple goodness. He was the master 
of a merchant vessel, and, in his visits to 
the West Indies and Great Britain, omitted 
no opportunity to labor for the highest in- 
terests of his fellow-men. During a tem- 
porary residence in Philadelphia, in the 
summer of 1838, the quiet and beautiful 
scenery around the ancient village of 
Frankford frequently attracted me from 
the heat and bustle of the city. 

Page 223, Channing. 

The last time I saw Dr. Channing was 
in the summer of 1841, when, in company 
with my English friend, Joseph Sturge, so 
well known for his philanthropic labors 
and liberal political opinions, I visited him 
in his summer residence in Rhode Island. 
In recalling the impressions of that visit, 
it can scarcely be necessary to say, that I 
have no reference to the peculiar religious 
opinions of a man whose life, beautifully 
and truly manifested above the atmo- 
sphere of sect, is now the world's common 
legacy. 

Page 224. To my Friend on the 
Death of his Sister. 

Sophia Sturge, sister of Joseph Sturge, of 
Birmingham, the President of the British 
Complete Suffrage Association, died in 
the ()th month, 1845. She was the col- 
league, counsellor, and ever-ready help- 
mate of her brother in ail his vast designs 
of beneficence. The Birmingham Pilot says 
of her: " Never, perhaps, were the active 
and passive virtues of the human charac- 
ter more harmoniously and beautifully 
blended than in this excellent woman." 

Page 227. To Fredrika Bremer. 

It is proper to say that these lines are 
the joint impromptus of my sister and 
myself. They are inserted here as an ex- 
pression of our admiration of the gifted 
stranger whom we have since learned to 
love as a friend. 

Page 230. Elliott. 

Ebenezer Elliott was, to the artisans of 
England, what Burns was to the peasantry 
of Scotland. His Corn-law Bhynies con- 
tributed not a little to that overwhelming 
tide of popular opinion and feeling which 
resulted in the repeal of the tax on bread. 
Well has the eloquent author of The Re- 
forms and Reformers of Great Britain 
said of him, " Not corn-law repealers 
alone, but all Britons who moisten their 
scanty bread with the sweat of the brow, 
are largely indebted to his inspiring lay, 
for the might j^ bound which the laboring 
mind of England has taken in our day." 



NOTES 



637 



Page 230. Ichabod. 

This poem was the outcome of the sur- 
prise and grief and forecast of evil con- 
sequences which I felt on reading the 
seventh of March speech of Daniel Web- 
ster in support of the '' compromise," and 
the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or 
personal enmity dictated it. On the con- 
trary my admiration of the splendid i^er- 
sonality and intellectual power of the great 
senator was never stronger than when I 
laid down his speech, and, in one of the 
saddest moments of my life, penned my 
protest. I saw, as I wrote, with painful 
clearness its sure results. If one spoke at 
all, he could onlj' speak in tones of stern 
and sorrowful rebuke. 

But death softens all resentments, and 
the consciousness of a common inherit- 
ance of frailty and weakness modifies the 
severity of judgment. Years after, in 
The Lost Occasion., I gave utterance to an 
almost universal regret that the great 
statesman did not live to make his last 
days glorious in defence of " Liberty and 
Union, one and inseparable." 

Page 234. Kossuth. 

It can scarcely be necessary to say that 
there are elements in the character and 
passages in the history of the great Hun- 
garian statesman and orator, which neces- 
sarily command the admiration of those, 
even, who believe that no political revolu- 
tion was ever worth the price of human 
blood. 

Page 234. To My Old Schoolmaster. 

These lines were addressed to my worthy 
friend Joshua Coffin, teacher, historian, 
and antiquarian. 

Page 236. Homilies from Oldhug hear. 

Dr. Withington, author of The Puritan., 
under the name of Jonathan Oldbug. 

Page 237. The Hero. 

The hero of the incident related in this 
poem was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the 
well-known philanthropist, who, when a 
young man, volunteered his aid in the 
Greek struggle for independence. 

Page 239. Rantoul. 

No more fitting inscription could be 
placed on the tombstone of Robert Rantoul 
than this: ''He died at his post in Con- 
gress, and his last words were a protest in 
the name of Democracy against the Fugi- 
tive-Slave Law." 

Page 240. William Fobster. 

William Forster, of Norwich, England, 
died in East Tennessee, in the 1st month, 
1854, while engaged in presenting to the 
governors of the States of this Union the 
address of his religious society on the evils 
of slavery. He was the relative and coad- 
jutor of the Buxtons, Gurneys, and Frys ; 
and his whole life, extending almost to 



threescore and ten years, was a pure and 
beautiful examjile of Christian benevo- 
lence. He had travelled over Europe, and 
visited most of its sovereigns, to plead 
against the slave-trade and slavery ; and 
had twice before made visits to this coun- 
try, under impressions of religious duty. 
He was the father of the Right Hon. Wil- 
liam Edward Forster. 

Page 247. Naples. 

Helen Ruthven Waterston, a lovely girl 
of seventeen, the only surviving child of 
the Rev. R. C. Waterston, died at Naples 
in July, 1858, and lies buried in the Pro- 
testant cemetery there. 

Page 253. The Singer. 

This poem was written on the death of 
Alice Gary. Her sister Phoebe, heart- 
broken by her loss, followed soon after. 
Lovely in person and character, they left 
behind them only friends and admirers. 

Page 255. How Mary Grew. 

These lines were in answer to an invita- 
tion to hear a lecture of Mary Grew, of 
Philadelphia, before the Boston Radical 
Club. The reference in the last stanza, is 
to an essay on Sappho by T. W. Higgin- 
son, read at the club the preceding month. 

Page 295. Norumbega Hall. 

Norumbega Hall at Wellesley College, 
named in honor of Eben Norton Horsf ord, 
who was one of the most munificent pa- 
trons of that noble institution, and who had 
just published an essay claiming the dis- 
covery of the site of the somewhat mythi- 
cal city of Norumbega, was opened with 
appropriate ceremonies, in April, 1886. 
The following sonnet was written for the 
occasion, and was read by President Alice 
E. Freeman, to whom it was addressed. 

Page 296. One of the Signers. 

Written for the unveiling of the statue 
of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass., 
July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was 
a native of the town, was a signer of 
the Declaration of Independence. Ames- 
bury or Ambresbury, so called from the 
" anointed stones " of the great Druidical 
temple near it, was the seat of one of the 
earliest religious houses in Britain. The 
tradition that the guilty wife of King 
Arthur fled thither for protection forms 
one of the finest passages in Tennyson's 
Idylls of the King. 

Page 298. The Tent on the Beach. 

It can scarcely be necessary to name as 
the two companions whom I reckoned with 
myself in this poetical picnic. Fields the let- 
tered magnate, and Taylor the free cosmop- 
olite. The long line of sandy beach which 
defines almost the whole of the New Hamp- 
shire sea-coast is especially marked near 
its southern extremity by the salt-mea- 
dows of Hampton. The Hampton River 



638 



NOTES 



winds through these meadows, and the 
reader maj', if he choose, imagine my tent 
pitelied near its mouth, where also was the 
scene of The Wreck of River mouth. 

Page oOL'. The Wreck of River- 
mouth. 

The Goody Cole who figures in this poem 
and The Changeling was Eunice Cole, who 
for a quarter of a century or more was 
feared, persecuted, and hated as the witch 
of Hampton. Rev. JStephen Bachiler was 
one of the ablest of the early New England 
preachers. His marriage late in life to a 
woman regarded by his church as disre- 
putable induced him to return to Eng- 
land. 
Page 313. The Maids of Attitash. 
Attitash, an Indian word signifying 
" huckleberry," is the name of a large and 
beautiful lake in the northern part of 
Amesbury. 
Page 327. Toussaint L'Ouverture. 
Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black chief- 
tain of Hayti, was a slave on the plantation 
" de Libertas," belonging to M. Bayou. 
When the rising of the negroes took place, 
in 1791, Toussaint refused to join them 
until he had aided M. Bayou and his 
family to escape to Baltimore. The white 
man had discovered in Toussaint many 
noble qualities, and had instructed him 
in some of the first branches of education ; 
and the preservation of his life was owing 
to the negro's gratitude for this kind- 
ness. 

In 1797, Toussaint L'Ouverture was ap- 
pointed, by the French government, Gen- 
eral-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, 
and, as such, signed the Convention with 
General Maitland for the evacuation of the 
island by the British. From this period, 
until 1801. the island, under the govern- 
ment of Toussaint, was happy, tranquil, 
and prosperous. The njiserable attempt 
of Napoleon to re-establish slavery in St. 
Domingo, although it failed of its intended 
object, proved fatal to the negro chieftain. 
Treacherously seized by Leclerc, he was 
hurried on board a vessel by night, and 
conveyed to France, where he was confined 
in a cold subterranean dungeon, at Besan- 
9on, where, in April, l.S()3, he died. The 
treatment of Toussaint finds a parallel 
only in the murder of the Duke D'Enghien. 
It was the remark of Godwin, in his Lec- 
tures, that the West India Islands, since 
their first discovery by Columbus, could 
not boast of a single name which de- 
serves comparison with that of Toussaint 
L'Ouverture. 

The reader may, perhaps, call to mind 
the beautiful sonnet of William Words- 
worth, addressed to Toussaint L'Ouver- 
ture, during his confinement in France. 



" Toussaint ! — thou most unhappy man of men ! 

Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough 

Within thy hearing, or thou liest now 
Buried in some deep dungeon's earless den ; 
O miserable chieftain ! — where and when 

Wilt thou find patience ? — Yet, die not, do 
thou 

Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow ; 
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, 
Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind 

Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and 
skies, — 
There 's not a breathing of the common wind 

That will forget thee : thou hast great allies. 
Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 

And love, and man's unconquerable mind." 

Page 330. The Slave-Ships. 

The French ship Le Rodeur, with a 
crew of twenty-two men, and with one 
hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from 
Bonny, in Africa, April, 1819. On ap- 
proaching the line, a terrible malady broke 
out, — an obstinate disease of the eyes, — 
contagious, and altogether beyond the re- 
sources of medicine. It was aggravated 
by the scarcity of water among the slaves 
(only half a wineglass per day being al- 
lowed to an individual) and by the extreme 
impurity of the air in which they breathed. 
By the advice of the physician, they were 
brought upon deck occasionally ; but some 
of the poor wretches, locking themselves 
in each other's arms, leaped overboard, in 
the hope, which so universally prevails 
among them, of being swiftly transported 
to their own homes in Africa. To check 
this, the captain ordered several who were 
stopped in the attempt to be shot, or 
hanged, before their companions. The 
disease extended to the crew ; and one 
after another were smitten with it, until 
only one remained unaffected. Yet even 
this dreadful condition did not preclude 
calculation ; to save the expense of sup- 
porting slaves rendered unsalable, and to 
obtain grounds for a claim against the un- 
derwriters, thirty-six of the negroes, having 
become blind, were thrown into the sea ana 
drowned I 

In the midst of their dreadful fears lest 
the solitary individual, whose sight ^ re- 
mained unaffected, should also be seized 
Avith the malady, a sail was discovered. It 
was the Spanish slaver, Leon. The same 
disease had been there ; and, horrible to 
tell, all the crew had become blind ! Un- 
able to assist each other, the vessels parted. 
The Spanish ship was never afterward 
heard of. The Rodeur reached Guada- 
loupe on the 21st of June ; the only man 
who had escaped the disease, and had thus 
been enabled to steer the slayer into port, 
caught it in three days after its arrival. 
Page 339. Clerical Oppressors. 
In the report of the celebrated pro- 



NOTES 



639 



slavery meeting- in Charleston, S. C, on 
the fourth of the ninth month, 1835, pub- 
lished in the Courier of that city, it was 
stated: "The clergy of all denominations 
attended in a body, lending their sanction 
to the proceedings, and adding by their 
presence to the impressive character of 
the scene." 

Page 347. Pennsylvania Hall. 

Read at the dedication of Pennsylvania 
Hall, Philadelphia, May 15, 1838. The 
building was erected by an association of 
gentlemen, irrespective of sect or party, 
' ' that the citizens of Philadelphia should 
possess a room wherein the principles of 
Liberty, and Equality of Civil Rights, could 
be freely discussed, and the evils of slav- 
ery fearlessly portrayed." On the evening 
of the 17th it was burned by a mob, de- 
stroying the office of the Pennsylvania 
Freeman, of which I was editor, and with 
it my books and papers. 

Page 351. A7id he, the basest of the base. 

The Northern author of the Congres- 
sional rule against receiving petitions of 
the people on the subject of Slavery. 

Page 360. The Sentence of John L. 
Bkown. 

John L. Brown, a young white man of 
South Carolina, was in 1844 sentenced to 
death for aiding a young slave woman, 
whom he loved and had married, to escape 
from slavery. No event in the history of 
the anti-slavery struggle so stirred the two 
hemispheres as did this dreadful sentence. 
A cry of horror was heard from Europe. 
Indeed, so strong was the pressure of the 
sentiment of abhorrence and disgust that 
South Carolina yielded to it, and the sen- 
tence was commuted to scourging and ban- 
ishment. 

Page 365. To a Southern States- 
man. 

John C. Calhoun, who had strongly 
urged the annexation of Texas, even if it 
should involve a war with England, was 
unwilling to promote the acquisition of 
Oregon, and pleaded as an excuse the peril 
of foreign complications. 

Page 368. The Branded Hand. 

Captain Jonathan Walker of Harwich, 
Mass., was solicited by several fugitive 
slaves at Pensacola, Florida, to carry them 
in his vessel to the British West Indies. 
Although well aware of the great hazard 
of the enterprise he attempted to comply 
with the request, but was seized at sea by 
an American vessel, thence sent back to 
Pensacola, where, after a long and rigor- 
ous confinement in prison, he was sentenced 
to be branded on his right hand with the 
letters ''S. S." (slave-stealer) and amerced 
in a heavy fine. 

Page 370. A Letter. 



Supposed to be written by the chairman 
of the ''Central Clique" at Concord, 
N. H., to the Hon. M. N., Jr., at Wash- 
ington, giving the result of the election. 

These verses were published in the 
Boston Chronotype in 1846. They refer 
to the contest in New Hampshire, which 
resulted in the defeat of the pro-slavery 
Democracy, and in the election of John P. 
Hale to the United States Senate. Al- 
though their authorship was not acknow- 
ledged, it was strongly suspected. They 
furnish a specimen of the way, on the 
whole rather good-natured, in which the 
liberty-lovers of half a century ago an- 
swered the social and political outlawry 
and mob violence to which they were sub- 
jected. 

Page 370. I hear the Free- Wills singing. 

The book-establishment of the Free- 
Will Baptists in Dover was refused the 
act of incorporation by the New Hamp- 
shire Legislature, for the reason that the 
newspaper organ of that sect and its lead- 
ing preachers favored abolition. 

Page 370. Our Belknap brother heard 
with awe. 

The senatorial editor of the Belhnap Ga- 
zette all along manifested a peculiar horror 
of "niggers " and "nigger parties." 

Page 370. At Pittsjield, Reuben Leavitt 
saw. 

The justice before whom Elder Storrs 
Avas brought for preaching abolition on a 
writ drawn by Hon. M. N., Jr., of Pitts- 
field. The sheriff served the writ while 
the elder was praying. 

Page 370. The schoolhouse, out of Canaan 
hauled. 

The academy at Canaan, N. H., received 
one or two colored scholars, and was in 
consequence dragged off into a swamp by 
Democratic teams. 

Page 371. 

What boots it that ice pelted out 
The anti-slavery ivovien. 

The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its 
first meeting in Concord, was assailed with 
stones and brickbats. 

Page 371. 

For this did shifty Atherton 
Make gag rules for the Great House? 

' ' Papers and memorials touching the 
subject of slavery shall be laid on the table 
without reading, debate, or reference." 
So read the gag-laAv, as it was called, intro- 
duced into the House by Mr. Atherton. 

Page 372. Daniel Neall. 

Dr. Neall was one of the noble band of 
Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose bravery 
Avas equalled only by their gentleness and 
tenderness. 

Page 372. SoNG OF Slaves in the 
Desert. 



640 



N( 



Suggested by a passage in Richardson's 
Journal in Africa. 

Page 'Sl'o. YoKKTOWN. 

Dr. Thacher, surgeon in Seammel's regi- 
ment, in his description of the siege of 
Yorktown, says: '' The labor on the Vir- 
ginia plantations is performed altogether 
by a species of the human race cruelly 
wrested from their native country, and 
doomed to perpetual bondage, while their 
masters are manfully contending for free- 
dom and the natural rights of man. Such 
is the inconsistency of human nature." 
Eighteen hundred slaves were found at 
Yorktown, after its surrender, and re- 
stored to their masters. Well was it said 
by Dr. Barnes, in his late work on slav- 
ery : " No slave was any nearer his free- 
dom after the surrender of Yorktown than 
when Patrick Henry first taught the notes 
of liberty to echo among the hills and 
vales of Virginia." 

Page 378. The Curse of the Chak- 
ter-Breakeks. 

The rights and liberties affirmed by 
Magna Charta were deemed of such im- 
portance in the thirteenth century, that 
the Bishops, twice a year, with tapers 
burning, and in their pontifical robes, pro- 
nounced, in the presence of the king and 
the representatives of the estates of Eng- 
land, the greater excommunication against 
the infringer of that instrument. The im- 
posing ceremony took place in the great 
Hall of Westminster. 

Page 382. Lines on the Portrait of 
A Celebrated Publisher. 

These lines were addressed to a maga- 
zine publisher, who, alarmed for his South- 
ern circulation, not only dropped the name 
of Grace Greenwood from his list of contrib- 
utors, but made an offensive parade of 
his action, with the view of strengthening 
his position among slaveholders and con- 
servatives. By some coincidence his por- 
trait was issued about the same time. 

Page 384. Derne. 

The storming of the city of Derne, in 
1805, by General Eaton, at the head of 
nine Americans, forty Greeks, and a mot- 
ley array of Turks and Arabs, was one of 
those feats of hardihood and daring which 
have in all ages attracted the admiration 
of the multitude. The higher and holier 
heroism of Christian self-denial and sacri- 
fice, in the humble walks of private duty, 
is seldom so well appreciated. 

Page 389. Tell of the first great triumph 
won. 

The election of Charles Sumner to the 
U. S. Senate "followed hard upon" the 
rendition of the fugitive Sims by the U. S. 
officials and the armed police of Boston. 
Page 395. Le Marais du Cygne. 



The massacre of unarmed and unoffend- 
ing men, in Southern Kansas, took place 
near the Marais du Cygne of the French 
voyageurs. 

Page 390. A Song for the Time. 

Written in the summer of 1850, during 
the political campaign of the Free Soil 
party under the candidacy of John C Fre- 
mont. 

Page 397. A Song. 

W^ritten after the election in 1856, which 
showed the immense gains of the Free Soil 
party, and insured its success in 1860. 

Page 415. Mithridates at Chios. 

It is recorded that the Chians, when sub- 
jugated by Mithridates of Cappadocia, 
were delivered up to their own slaves, to 
be carried away captive to Colchis. Athe- 
naeus considers this a just punishment for 
their wickedness in first introducing the 
slave-trade into Greece, From this an- 
cient villany of the Chians the proverb 
arose, " The Chian hath bought himself a 
master." 

Page 439. And beauty is its own excuse. 

For the idea of this line, I am indebted 
to Emerson, in his inimitable sonnet to the 
Rhodora, — 

If eyes were made for seeing, 

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being. 

Page 451. The Christian Tourists. 

The reader of the Biography of William 
Allen, the philanthropic associate of Clark- 
son and Romilly, cannot fail to admire his 
simple and beautiful record of a tour 
through Europe, in the years 1818 and 
1819, in the company of his American 
friend, Stephen Grellett. 

Page 453. To Pius IX. 

The writer of these lines is no enemy of 
Catholics. He has, on more than one occa- 
sion, exposed himself to the censures of 
his Protestant brethren, by his strenuous 
endeavors to procure indemnification for 
the owners of the convent destroyed near 
Boston. He defended the cause of the 
Irish patriots long before it had become 
popular in this country ; and he was one 
of the first to urge the most liberal aid to 
the suffering and starving population of 
the Catholic island. The severity of his 
language finds its ample apology in the 
reluctant confession of one of the most 
eminent Romish priests, the eloquent and 
devoted Father Ventura. 

Page 461. The New Exodus. 

Written upon hearing that slavery had 
been formally abolished in Egypt. Un- 
happily the pledges of the government 
proved unreliable. 

Page 401. The Conquest of Fin- 
land, 

"Joseph Sturge, with a companion, 



NOTES 



641 



Thomas Harvey, has been visiting the 
shores of Finland, to ascertain the amount 
of mischief and loss to poor and peace- 
able sufferers, occasioned by the gunboats 
of the Allied squadrons in the late war, 
with a view to obtaining relief for them." 
Friends^ Review. 
Page 463. From Perugia. 
" The thing which has most dissevered 
the people from the Pope, — the unforgiv- 
able thing, — the breaking point between 
him and them, — has been the encourage- 
ment and promotion he gave to the officer 
under whom were executed the slaughters 
of Perugia." Mrs. ^towe's Xe«ers/rom 
Italy, 
Page 471. On the Big Horn. 
In the disastrous battle on the Big Horn 
River, in which General Custer and his 
entire force were slain, the chief Rain-in- 
the-Face was one of the fiercest leaders of 
the Indians. In Longfellow's poem on 
the massacre, these lines will be remem- 
bered : — 

" Revenge ! " cried Rain-in-the-Face, 
" Revenge upon all the race 

Of the White Chief with yellow hair ! " 
And the mountains dark and high 
From their crags reechoed the cry 
Of his anger and despair. 

He is now a man of peace ; and the agent 
at Standing Rock, Dakota, writes, Septem- 
ber 28, 1886: "Rain-in-the-Face is very 
anxious to go to Hampton. I fear he is 
too old, but he desires very much to go." 
The Southern Workman^ the organ of 
General Armstrong's Industrial School at 
Hampton, Va., said of this: — 

" Rain-in-the-Face has applied before to 
come to Hampton, but his age would ex- 
clude him from the school as an ordinary 
student. He has shown himself very 
much in earnest about it, and is anxious, 
all say, to learn the better ways of life. 
It is as unusual as it is striking to see a 
man of his age, and one who has had such 
an experience, willing to give up the old 
way, and put himself in the position of a 
boy and a student." 

Page 472. Memories. 

[Whittier's biographer says that this 
poem was written in 1841, "To a friend 
who told the poet that Memories was her 
favorite poem, he said, ' I love it too ; but 
I hardly knew whether to publish it, it was 
so personal and near my heart.' "] 

Page 487. Snow-Bound. 

The inmates of the family at the Whit- 
tier homestead who are referred to in the 
poem were my father, mother, my brother, 
and two sisters, and my uncle and aunt. 
The "not unfeared, half-welcome guest" 
was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge 
Livermore of New Hampshire, a young 



woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, 
eccentric, with slight control over her vio- 
lent temper, which sometimes made her 
religious profession doubtful. She was 
equally ready to exhort in school-house 
prayer-meetings and dance in a Washing- 
ton ball-room, while her father was a mem- 
ber of congress. She early embraced the 
doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt it 
her duty to proclaim the Lord's speedy 
coming. With this message she crossed 
the Atlantic and spent the greater part of 
a long life in travelling over Europe and 
Asia. She lived for some time with Lady 
Hester Stanhope on the slope of Mt. 
Lebanon. A friend of mine found her, 
when quite an old woman, wandering in 
Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who accepted 
her as their prophetess and leader. At the 
time referred to in Snow-Bound she was 
boarding at the Rocks Village, about two 
miles from us. 

Page 503. Voyage op the Jettie. 

The picturesquely situated Wayside Inn 
at West Ossipee, N. H., is now in ashes; 
and to its former guests these somewhat 
careless rhymes may be a not unwelcome 
reminder of j^leasant summers and au- 
tumns on the banks of the Bearcamp and 
Chocorua. To the author himself they 
have a special interest from the fact that 
they were written, or improvised, under 
the eye, and for the amusement of a be- 
loved invalid friend whose last earthly 
sunsets faded from the mountain ranges 
of Ossipee and Sandwich. 

Page 538. O Beauty, old yet ever new ! 

"Too late I loved Thee, Beauty of 
ancient days, yet ever new ! And lo ! Thou 
wert within, and I abroad searching for 
Thee. Thou wert with me, but I was not 
with Thee." — August. Soliloq., Book X. 

Page 538. Who saw the Darkness over- 
flowed. 

' ' And I saw that there was an Ocean 
of Darkness and Death : but an infinite 
Ocean of Light and Love flowed over the 
Ocean of Darkness : And in that I saw the 
infinite Love of God." — George Fox^s 
Journal. 

Page 539. The Cry of a Lost Soul. 

Lieutenant Herndon's Report of the Ex- 
ploration of the Amazon has a striking de- 
scription of the peculiar and melancholy 
notes of a bird heard by night on the 
shores of the river. The Indian Guides 
called it ' ' The Cry of a Lost Soul. ' ' Among 
the numerous translators of the poem was 
the late Emperor of Brazil. 

Page 547. Such golden words as hers. 

Avis Keene, whose very presence was a 
benediction. 

Page 547. Repeating where His works 
were wrought. 



642 



NOTES 



Sibyl Jones, whose inspired eloquence 
impressed all who knew her. She made 
visits of Christian love to various parts of 
Europe, to the West Coast of Africa and 
Palestine. 

Page 572. Hymns of the Brahmo 
Soma J. 

I have attempted this paraphrase of the 
Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj of India, as 
I find them in Mozoomdar's account of the 
devotional exercises of that remarkable 
religious development which has attracted 
far less attention and sympathy from the 
Christian world than it deserves, as a fresh 
revelation of the direct action of the Di- 
vine Spirit upon the human heart. 

Page 576. The Captain's Well. 

The story of the shipwreck of Captain 
Valentine Bagley, on the coast of Arabia, 
and his sufferings in the desert, has been 
familiar from my childhood. It has been 
partially told in the singularly beautiful 
lines of my friend, Harriet Prescott Spof- 
ford, on the occasion of a public celebra- 
tion, at the Newburyport Library. To 
the charm and felicity of her verse, as far 
as it goes, nothing can be added, but I 
have endeavored to give a fuller detail of 
the touching incident upon which it is 
founded. 

Page 578. An Outdoor Reception. 

The substance of these lines, hastily pen- 
cilled several years ago, I find among such 
of my unprinted scraps as have escaped 
the waste-basket and the fire. In tran- 
scribing it I have made some changes, ad- 
ditions, and omissions. 

Page 585. To G. G. 

The daughter of Daniel Gurteen, Esq., 
delegate from Haverhill, England, to the 
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary cele- 
bration of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The 
Rev. John Ward of the former place and 
many of his old parishioners were the 
pioneer settlers of the new town on the 
Merrimac. 

Page 601. Metacom. 

Metacom, or Philip, the chief of the 
Wampanoags, was the most powerful and 
sagacious sachem who ever made war 
upon the English. 

Page 603. Mount Agiochook. 

The Indians supposed the White Moun- 
tains were the residence of powerful spirits, 
and in consequence rarely ascended them. 

Page 60;i The Drunkard to his 
Bottle. 

I was thinking of the temperance lyrics 
the great poet of Scotland might have 
written had he put his name to a pledge 
of abstinence, a thing unhappily unknown 
in his day. The result of my cogitation 
was this poor imitation of his dialect. 

Page 605. Isabella of Austria. 



Isabella, Infanta of Parma, and consort 
of Joseph of Austria, predicted her own 
death, immediately after her marriage 
with the Emjieror. Amidst the gayety 
and splendor of Vienna and Presburg, 
she was reserved and melancholy ; she 
believed that Heaven had given her a 
view of the future, and that her child, the 
namesake of the great Maria Theresa, 
would perish with her. Her prediction 
was fulfilled. 

Page 608. MoGG Megone. 

Mogg Megone, or Hegone, was a leader 
among the Saco Indians, in the bloody war 
of 1677. He attacked and captured the 
garrison at Black Point, October 12th of 
that year ; and cut off, at the same time, 
a party of Englishmen near Saco River. 
From a deed signed by this Indian in 1664, 
and from other circumstances, it seems 
that, previous to the war, he had mingled 
much with the colonists. On this account, 
he was probably selected by the principal 
sachems as their agent in the treaty signed 
in November, 1676. 

Page 608. ^Twas the gift of Castine to 
Mogg Megone. 

Baron de St. Castine came to Canada in 
1644. Leaving his civilized companions, 
he plunged into the great wilderness, and 
settled among the Penobscot Indians, near 
the mouth of their noble river. He here 
took for his wives the daughters of the 
great Modocawando, — the most powerful 
sachem of the East. His castle was plun- 
dered by Governor Andros, during his 
reckless administration ; and the enraged 
Baron is supposed to have excited the In- 
dians into open hostility to the English. 

Page 608. Grey Jocelyn's eye is never 
sleeping. 

The owner and commander of the garri- 
son at Black Point, which Mogg attacked 
and plundered. He was an old man at the 
period to which the tale relates. 

Page 608. JVhere Phillips^ men their 
watch are keeping. 

Major Phillips, one of the principal men 
of the Colony. His garrison sustained a 
long and terrible siege by the savages. As 
a magistrate and a gentleman, he exacted 
of his plebeian neighbors a remarkable 
degree of deference. The Court Records 
of the settlement inform us that an indi- 
vidual was fined for the heinous offence of 
saying that "Major Phillips's mare was 
as lean as an Indian dog." 

Page 608. Steals Harmon down from the 
sands of York. 

Captain Harmon, of Georgeana, now 
York, was for many years the terror of 
the Eastern Indians. In one of his expe- 
ditions up the Kennebec River, at the head 
of a party of rangers, he discovered twenty 



NOTES 



643 



of the savages asleep by a large fire. 
Cautiously creeping towards them until 
he was certain of his aim, he ordered his 
men to single out their objects. The first 
discharge killed or mortally wounded the 
whole number of the unconscious sleepers. 

Page 608. For vengeance left his vine- 
hung isle. 

Wood Island, near the mouth of the 
Saco. It was visited by the Sieur de Monts 
and Champlain, in 1603. The following 
extract, from the journal of the latter, re- 
lates to it: "Having left the Kennebec, 
we I'an along the coast to the westward, 
and cast anchor under a small island, near 
the mainland, where we saw twenty or more 
natives. 1 here visited an island, beauti- 
fully clothed with a fine growth of forest 
trees, particularly of the oak and walnut ; 
and overspread with vines, that, in their 
season, produce excellent grapes. We 
named it the island of Bacchus." — Les 
Voyages de Sieur Chamjjlain, liv. 2, c. 8. 

Page 608. The hunted outlaw, Boniton. 

John Bonython was the son of Richard 
Bonython, Gent., one of the most efficient 
and able magistrates of the Colony. John 
l^roved to be "a degenerate plant." In 
1635, we find by the Court Records that, 
for some offence, he was fined 40s. In 
1640, he was fined for abuse towai'd R. 
Gibson, the minister, and Mary, his wife. 
Soon after he was fined for disorderly con- 
duet in the house of his father. In 1645, 
the "Great and Genei'al Court adjudged 
John Bonython outlawed, and incapable 
of any of his Majesty's laws, and pro- 
claimed him a rebel." {Court Records of 
the Province, 1645.) In 1651, he bade de- 
fiance to the laws of Massachusetts, and 
was again outlawed. He acted independ- 
ently of all law and authority ; and hence, 
doubtless, his burlesque title of " the 
Sagamore of Saco," which has come down 
to the present generation in the following 
epitaph : — 

Here lies Bonython, the Sagamore of Saco ; 
He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went to 
Hobomoko. 

By some means or other, he obtained a 
large estate. In this poem, I have taken 
some liberties with him, not strictly war- 
ranted by historical facts, although the 
conduct imputed to him is in keeping with 
his general character. Over the last years 
of his life lingers a deep obscurity. Even 
the manner of his death is uncertain. He 
was supposed to have been killed by the 
Indians ; but this is doubted by the able 
and indefatigable author of the History of 
Saco and Biddeford. — Part I. p. 115. 

Page 608. From the leaping brook to the 
Saco Miver. 



Foxwell's Brook flows from a marsh or 
bog, called the "Heath," in Saco, con- 
taining thirteen hundred acres. In this 
brook, and surrounded by wild and 
romantic scenery, is a beautiful waterfall, 
of more than sixty feet. 

Page 609. Where zealous Hiacoomes 
stood. 

Hiacoomes, the first Christian preacher 
on Martha's Vineyard ; for a biography of 
whom the reader is referred to Increase 
Mayhew's account of the Praying Indians, 
1726. The following is related of him; 
" One Lord's day, after meeting, where 
Hiacoomes had been preaching, there 
came in a Powwaw very angry, and said, 
' I know all the meeting Indians are liars. 
You say you don't care for the Pow- 
waws ; ' then calling two or three of them 
by name, he railed at them, and told them 
they were deceived, for the Powwaws 
could kill all the meeting Indians, if they 
set about it. But Hiacoomes told him 
that he would be in the midst of all the 
Powwaws in the island, and they should 
do the utmost they could against him ; 
and when they should do their worst by 
their witchcraft to kill him, he would 
without fear set himself against them, by 
remembering Jehovah. He told them also 
he did put all the Powwaws under his 
heel. Such was the faith of this good 
man. Nor were these Powwaws ever able 
to do these Christian Indians any hurt, 
though others were frequently hurt and 
killed by them." — Mayhew, pp. 6, 7, 
c. 1. 

Page 610. Because she cries with an ache 
in her tooth. 

"The tooth-ache," says Roger Wil- 
liams in his observations upon the lan- 
guage and customs of the New England 
tribes, " is the only paine which will force 
their stoute hearts to cr5\" He after- 
wards remarks that even the Indian 
women never cry as he has heard "some 
of their men in this paine." 

Page 611. Wuttajnuttata, "Let us 
drink." Weekan, "It is sweet." Vide 
Roger Williams's Key to the Indian Lan- 
guage, " in that parte of America called 
New England." — London, 1643, p. 35. 

Page 611. Wetuomanit, — a house god, 
or demon. "They — the Indians — have 
given me the names of thirty-seven gods 
which I have, all which in their solemne 
Worships they invocate ! " — R. Wil- 
liams's Briefe Observations of the Cus- 
toms. Manners, Woj-ships, etc., of the 
Natives, in Peace and Warre, in Life and 
Death: on all which is added Spiritual 
Observations, General and Particular, of 
Chief e and Special use — upon all occa- 
sions — to all the English inhabiting these 



644 



NOTES 



parts ; yet Pleasant and Profitable to the 
view of all Mene : p. 110. c. 21. 

Page 012. Which marks afar the Desert 
Isle. 

Mt. Desert Island, the Bald Mountain 
upon which ovei'looks Frenchman's and 
Penobscot Bay. It was npon this island 
that the Jesuits made their earliest settle- 
ment. 

Page 613. Half trembling, as he seeks to 
look. 

Father Hennepin, a missionary among 
the Iroquois, mentions that the Indians 
believed him to be a conjurer, and that 
they were particulai-ly afraid of a bright 
silver chalice which he had in his posses- 
sion. " The Indians," says P^re Jerome 
Lallamant, " fear us as the greatest sor- 
cerers on earth." 

Page 613. For Bomazeen from Tacconock. 

Bomazeen is spoken of by Penhallow 
as " the famous warrior and chieftain of 
Norridgewock." He was killed in the at- 
tack of the English upon Norridgewock, 
in 1724. 

Page 613. Like a shrouded ghost the 
Jesuit stands. 

P^re Ralle, or Rasles, was one of the 
most zealous and indefatigable of that 
band of Jesuit missionaries who at the 
beginning of the seventeenth century 
penetrated the forests of America, with 
the avowed object of converting the 
heathen. The first religious mission of 
the Jesuits to the savages in North Amer- 
ica was in Kill. The zeal of the fathers 
for the conversion of the Indians to the 
Catholic faith knew no bounds. For this 
they plunged into the depths of the wilder- 
ness ; habitixated themselves to all the 
hardships and privations of the natives ; 
suffered cold, hunger, and some of them 
death itself, by the extremest tortures. 
Their success among the natives, however, 
by no means equalled their exertions. P^re 
Lallamant says : '' With respect to adult 
persons, in good health, there is little ap- 
parent success ; on the contrary, there have 
been nothing but storms and whirlwinds 
from that quarter." 

Sebastian Ralle established himself, 
some time about the year 1670, at Nor- 
ridgewock, where he continued luore than 
forty years. He was accused, and per- 
haps not without justice, of exciting his 
praying Indians against the English, whom 
he looked upon as the enemies not oiAy of 
his king, but also of the Catholic religion. 
He was killed by the English, in 1724, at 
the foot of the cross wliich his own hands 
had planted. This Indian church was 
broken up, and its members either killed 
outright or dispersed. 
in a letter written by Ralle to his 



nephew he gives the following account of his 
church, and his own labors : "All my con- 
verts repair to the church regularly twice 
every day ; first, very early in the morn- 
ing, to attend mass, and again in the even- 
ing, to assist in the prayers at sunset. As 
it is necessary to fix the imagination of 
savages, whose attention is easily dis- 
tracted, I have composed prayers, calcu- 
lated to inspire them with just sentiments 
of the august sacrifice of our altars : they 
chant, or at least recite them aloud, during 
mass. Besides preaching to them on Sun- 
days and saints' days, I seldom let a work- 
ing-day pass, without making a concise 
exhortation, for the purpose of inspiring 
them with horror at those vices to which 
they are most addicted, or to confirm them 
in the practice of some particular virtue." 
Vide Lettres Edifianies et Cur., Vol. VI- 
p. 127. 

Page 616. Pale priest ! what proud and 
lofty dreams. 

The character of Ralle has probably 
never been correctly delineated. By his 
brethren of the Romish Church, he has 
been nearly apotheosized. On the other 
hand, our Puritan historians have repre- 
sented him as a demon in human form. 
He was undoubtedly sincere in his devo- 
tion to the interests of his church, and not 
over-scrupulous as to the means of advan- 
cing those interests. " The French," says 
the author of the History of Saco and 
Biddeford, "after the peace of 1713, 
secretly promised to supply the Indians 
with arms and ammunition, if they would 
renew hostilities. Their principal agent 
was the celebrated Ralle, the French 
Jesuit " (p. 215). 

Page (il7. Where are De Rouville and 
Castine ? 

Hertel de Rouville was an active and 
unsparing enemy of the English. He was 
the leader of the combined French and 
Indian forces which destroyed Deerfield 
and massacred its inhabitants, in 1703. 
He was afterwards killed in the attack 
upon Haverhill. Tradition says that, on 
examining his dead body, his head and 
face were found to be perfectly smooth, 
without the slightest appearance of hair 
or beard. 

Page (517. Cowesass ? — taivhich wessa- 
seen ? Are you afraid ? — why fear you ? 

Page ()19. The Missionary. 

"It is an awful, an arduous thing to 
root out every affection for earthly things, 
so as to live only for another world. I am 
now far, very far, from you all ; and as I 
look around and see the Indian scenery, I 
sigh to think of the distance which sepa- 
rates us." — Letters of Henry Martyn, from 
hidia. 



NOTES 



645 



Page 622. Massachusetts. 

Written on hearing that the Resolutions 
of the Legislature of Massachusetts on the 
subject of Slavery, presented by Hon. C. 
Gushing to the House of Representatives 
of the United States [in 1837] had been 
laid on the table unread and unreferred 
under the infamous rule of " Patton's Re- 
solution." 

Page (J22. The Home-Coming of the 
Bride. 

[The home of Sarah Greenleaf was upon 
the Newbury shore of the Merrimac, nearly 
opposite the home of the Whittiers. The 
house was standing until a recent date. 
Among Mr. Whittier's papers was found 
this fragment of a ballad about the home- 
coming, as a bride, of his grandmother, 
Sarah Greenleaf.] 

Page 022. The Song of the Ver- 

MONTERS. 

[Written during school-days, and pub- 
lished anonymously in 1833. The secret 
of authorship was not discovered for sixty 
years.] 

Page 623. To A Poetical Trio in 
the City of Gotham. 

[This jew d' esprit was written by Whit- 
tier in 1832. The notes are his own. The 
authorship was not discovered till after 
his death.] 

Page 625. Album Verses. 

[Written in the album of May Pillsbury 
of West Newbury, in the fall of 1838, 
when Whittier was at home on a visit 
from Philadelphia, where he was engaged 
in editorial work.] 

Page 625. What State Street Said. 

[Published in The National Era, May 
22, 1851.] 

Page 626. The Quakers are Out, 

[A campaign song written to be sung at 
a Republican Mass Meeting held in New- 
buryport, Mass., October 11, I860.] 

Page 626. A Legend of the 
Lake. 

[This poem, originally printed in The 
Atlantic Monthly, was withheld from pub- 
lication in his volumes by Mr. Whittier, 
in deference to living relatives of the hero 
of the poem. Death finally removed the 
restriction.] 



Page 627. Lines on Leaving Apple- 

DORE. 

[Sent in a letter to Celia Thaxter.] 
Page 628. Mrs. Choate's House- 

W ARMING. 

[" His washerwoman, Mrs. Choate, by 
industry and thrift had been enabled to 
build for her family a comfortable house. 
When it was ready for occupancy, there 
was a house-warming, attended by all the 
neighbors, who brought substantial to- 
kens of their good-will, including all the 
furniture needed in her new parlor. Mr. 
Whittier's hand was to be seen in the 
whole movement : he was present at the 
festivity, and made a little speech, con- 
gratulating Mrs. Choate upon her well- 
deserved success in life, and said he would 
read a piece of machine poetry which had 
been intrusted to him for the occasion. 
These are the lines, which were, of course, 
of his own composition." — S. T. PiCK- 
ARD, Life and Letters of John Greenleaf 
Whittier.'] 

Page 628. An Autograph. 

[Written for an old friend. Rev. S. H. 
Emery, of Quincy, 111., who revisited 
Whittier in 1868.] 

Page ()28. A Farewell. 

[Written for Mr. and Mrs. Claflin as 
they were about to sail for Europe.] 

Page 628. On a Fly-Leaf of Long- 
fellow's Poems. 

[Written at the Asquam House in the 
summer of 1882.] 

Page 629. Samuel E. Sewall. 

[An inscription for a mai'ble bust, mod- 
eled by Anne Whitney, and placed in the 
Cary Library, Lexington, Mass., May, 
1884.] 

Page 629. Lines Written in an Al- 
bum. 

[The album belonged to the grandson 
of Whittier's life-long friend, Theodore D. 
Weld, and the lines were written in April, 
1884.] 

Page 629. A Day's Journey. 

[Written in 1886, for the tenth anniver- 
sary of the wedding of his niece.] 

Page 629. A Fragment. 

[Found among Mr. Whittier's papers, in 
his handwriting, but undated.] 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



A BEAUTIFUL and happy girl, 472. 

A bending staff I would not break, 530. 

A blush as of roses, 395. 

Above, below, in sky and sod, 535. 

A Christian ! going, gone, 359. 

A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw, 205. 

Across the frozen marshes, 4G1. 

Across the sea I heard the groans, 465. 

Across the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's 

drouth and sand, 381. 
A dirge is wailing from the Gulf of storm-vexed 

Mexico, 604. 
A drear and desolate shore, 157. 
A few brief years have passed away, 369. 
After your pleasant morning travel, 629. 
Against the sunset's glowing wall, 522. 
Against the wooded hills it stands, 167. 
A gold fringe on the purpling hem, 200. 
All day the darkness and the cold, 177. 
All grim and soiled and brown with tan, 447. 
"All hail ! " the bells of Christmas rang, 568. 
All night above their rocky bed, 396. 
" All ready ? " cried the captain, 330. 
All things are Thine : no gift have we, 285. 
Along Crane River's sunny slopes, 145. 
Along the aisle where prayer was made, 550. 
Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold, 102. 
Amidst these glorious works of Thine, 280. 
Amidst Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt, 165. 
Amidst thy sacred effigies, 429. 
Among their graven shapes to whom, 258. 
Among the legends sung or said, 160. 
Among the thousands who with hail and cheer, 

589. 
A moony breadth of virgin face, 382. 
And have they spurned thy word, 622. 
Andrew Rykman 's dead and gone, 539. 
" And where now. Bayard, will thy footsteps tend, 

260. 
A night of wonder ! piled afar, 621. 
Annie and Rhoda, sisters twain, 123. 
A noble life is in thy care, 593. 
A noteless stream, the Birchbrook runs, 164. 
Another hand is beckoning us, 222. 
A picture memory brings to me, 504. 
A pious magistrate ! sound his praise throughout, 

389. 
Around Sebago's lonely lake, 13. 
As Adam did in Paradise, 270. 
As a guest who may not stay, 263. 
A score of years had come and gone, 142. 
A shallow stream, from fountains, 503. 
As Islam's Prophet, when his last day drew, 166. 
As o'er his furrowed fields which lie, 435. 
A sound as if from bells of silver, 195. 
A sound of tumult troubles all the air, 397. 
As they who, tossing midst the storm at night, 

376. 
As they who watch by sick-beds find relief, 97. 
A strength Thy service cannot tire, 371. 
A strong and mighty Angel, 423. 
A tale for Roman guides to tell, 163. 



A tender child of summers three, 571. 
At morn I prayed, " I fain would see, 533. 
A track of moonlight on a quiet lake, 232. 

Bards of the island city ! — where of old, 623. 

Beams of noon, like burning lances, through the 
tree-tops flash and glisten, 377. 

Bearer of Freedom's holy light, 432. 

Bear him, comrades, to his grave, 394. 

Before my drift-wood fire I sit, 581. 

Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer, 567. 

Behind us at our evening meal, 543. 

Believe me, Lucy Larcom, it gives me real sor- 
row, 627. 

Beneath the low-hung night cloud, 141. 

Beneath the moonUght and the snow, 501. 

Beneath thy skies, November, 397. 

Beside a stricken field I stood, 414. 

Beside that milestone, where the level sun, 502. 

Between the gates of birth and death, 587. 

Bind up thy tresses, thou beautiful one, 607. 

Bland as the morning breath of June, 176. 

Blessings on thee, little man, 484. 

Blest land of Judaea ! thrice hallowed of song, 514. 

Blossom and greenness, making all, 586. 

" Bring out your dead ! " The midnight street, 4. 

" Build at Kallundborg by the sea, 315. 

But what avail inadequate words to reach, 567. 

By fire and cloud, across the desert sand, 461. 

Call him not heretic whose works attest, 566. 
Calm on the breast of Loch Maree, 46. 
Calmly the night came down, 600. 
Champion of those who groan beneath, 326. 
Climbing a path which leads back never more, 

582. 
Close beside the meeting waters, 595. 
Conductor Bradley, (always may his name, 144. 

Dark the halls, and cold the feast, 25. 
Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, 534. 
Dear Anna, when I brought her veil, 595. 
Dear friends, who read the world aright, 231 . 
Dear Sister ! while the wise and sage, 478. 
Dream not, O Soul, that easy is the task, 566. 
Dry the tears for holy Eva, 268. 

Earthly arms no more uphold him, 591. 
Ere down yon blue Carpathian hills, 21. 

Fair islands of the sunny sea ! midst all rejoicing 
things, 592. 

Fair Nature's priestesses ! to whom, 232. 

Far away in the twilight time, 73. 

Far from his close and noisome cell, 436. 

Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act, 258. 

Father ! to thy suffering poor, 518. 

Fold thy hands, thy work is over, 594. 

Fond scenes, which delighted my youthful ex- 
istence, 597. 

For ages on our river borders, 188. 

For the fairest maid in Hampton, 311. 



648 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



For weeks the clouds had raked the hills, 105. 

Friend of mine ! whose lot was cast, 480. 

Friend of my many years, SOU. 

Friend of my soul ! as with moist eye, 218. 

Friend of the Slave, and yet the friend of all, 
372. 

From Alton Bay to Sandwich Dome, 207. 

From gold to gray, -462. 

From pain and peril, by land and main, 576. 

From purest wells of English undefiled, 583. 

From the green Amesbury hill which bears the 
name, 157. 

From the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the 
lake that never fails, 58. 

From the hills of home forth looking, far be- 
neath the tent-like span, 03. 

From these wild rocks I look to-day, 278. 

From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs 
of Maine, 272. 

From Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still, 373. 

Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, 566. 

" Get ye up from the wratli of God's terrible 

day," 511. 
Gift from the cold and silent past, 11. 
God bless New Hampshire ! Irom her granite 

peaks, 364. 
God bless ye, brothers ! in the fight, 435. 
God called the nearest angels who dwell with 

Him above, 557. 
God's love and peace be with thee, where, 233. 
Gone before us, O our brother, 212. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 346. 
Gone hath the spring, with all its flowers, 177. 
Gone to thy Heavenly Father's rest, 341. 
Graceful in name and in thyself, our river, 585. 
Gray searcher of the upper air, 603. 
" Great peace in Europe ! Order reigns, 457. 

Hail, heavenly gift ! within the human breast, 

598. 
Hail to Posterity, 126. 

Hands off ! thou tithe-fat plunderer ! play, 230. 
Happy young friends, sit by me, 1G8. 
Haunted of Beauty, hke the marvellous youth, 

266. 
Have I not voyaged, friend beloved, with thee, 

554, 
Have ye heard of our hunting, o'er mountain 

and glen, 336. 
Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard, 446. 
He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes, 

172. 
Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day, 567. 
He had bowed down to drunkenness, 4,58. 
He has done the work of a true man, 251. 
Here is the place ; right over the hill, 70. 
He rests with tlie immoi-tals ; his journey has 

been long, 593. 
Here, wliile the loom of Winter weaves, 482. 
Her finpers shame the ivory keys, 98. 
Her window opens to the bay, 309. 
He stood on the brow of the well-known hill, 

GOG. 
His laurels fresh from song and lay, 260. 
Ho — all to the borders ! Vermonters, come 

do\vn, 622. 
Ho ! thou who seekest late and long, 360. 
Ho ! workers of the old time styled, 439. 
Hoot ! — daur ye shaw ye' re face again, 603. 
How bland and sweet the greeting of this 

breeze, 220. 
How has New England's romance fled, 5. 
How smiled the land of France, 216. 



How strange to greet, this frosty morn, 182. 
How sweetly come the holy psalms, 244. 
How sweetly on the wood-girt town, 10. 
Hurrah ! the seaward breezes, 440. 
Hushed now the sweet consoling tongue, 628. 

I ask not now for gold to gild, 529. 

I call the old time back : I bring my lay, 75. 

I did but dream. I never knew, 548. 

I do believe, and yet, in grief, 46. 

I do not love thee, Isabel, and yet thou art most 
fair, 607. 

If I have seemed more prompt to censure wrong, 
241. 

I give thee joy ! — I know to tliee, 247. 

I have been thinking of the victims bound, 455 

I have not felt, o'er seas of sand, 527. 

I heard the train's shrill whistle call, 389. 

I know not, Time and Space so intervene, 100. 

I love the old melodious lays, 1 . 

Immortal Love, forever full, 544. 

I mourn no more my vanished years, 485. 

In calm and cool and silence, once again, 532, 

I need not ask thee, for my sake, 250. 

In my dream, methought I trod, 483. 

In sky and wave the white clouds swam, 313. 

In that black forest, where, wlien day is done, 539. 

In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's moun- 
tains, 245. 

In the minister's morning sermon, 563. 

In the old days (a custom laid aside), 322. 

In the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame, 428. 

In the outskirts of the village, 68. 

In the solemn days of old, 454. 

In trance and dream of old, God's prophet saw, 
252. 

In Westminster's royal halls, 378. 

I said I stood upon thy grave, 390. 

I shall not soon forget that sight, 473. 

I sing the Pilgrim of a softer clime, 126. 

Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm, 191. 

I spread a scanty board too late, 506. 

Is this the land our fathers loved, 338. 

Is this thy voice whose treble notes of fear, 3G5. 

It chanced that while the pious troops of France, 
458. 

It is done, 425. 

Its windows flashing to the sky, 84. 

It was late in mild October, and the long autum- 
nal rain, 445. 

I wait and watch ; before my eyes, 486. 

I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made, 203. 

I would I were a painter for the sake, 194. 

I would not sin, in this half-playful strain, 298. 

I would the gift I offer here, 438. 

I write my name as one, 506. 

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying 

day, 247. 
Just God ! and these are they, 339. 

Know'st thou, O slave-cursed land, 415. 

Last night, just as the tints of autumn's sky, 182. 

Last week — the Lord be praised for all His mer- 
cies, 392. 

Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk, 319. 

"Let there be light ! " God spake of old, 286. 

Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State's 
rusted shield, 364. 

Liglit, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and 
o'er all, 179. 

Like that ancestral judge who bore his name, 629. 

Long since, a dream of heaven I had, 550. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



649 



Look on him ! through his dungeon grate, 450. 
Low in the east, against a white, cold dawn, 575. 
Luck to the craft that bears this name of mine, 
2GG. 

Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil, 521. 

Maiden ! with the fair brown tresses, 215. 

Make, for he loved thee well, our Merrimac, 580. 

Maud MuUer, on a summer's day, 55. 

Men ! if manhood still ye claim, 3G2. 

Men of the North-Land ! where 's the manly 

spirit, 340. 
Men said at vespers ; "All is well," 283. 
'Midst the men and things which will, 507. 
'Midst the palace bowers of Hungary, imperial 

Presburg's pride, C05. 
Muttering " fine upland staple," " prime Bea- 

Island finer," 625. 
My ear is full of summer sounds, 409. 
My garden roses long ago, 294. 
My heart was heavy, for its trust had been, 478. 
My lady walks her morning round, 150. 
My old Welsh neighbor over the way, 125. 
My thoughts are all in yonder town, 555. 

Nauhaught, the Indian deacon, who of old, 121. 

'Neath skies that winter never knew, 288. 

Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the day, 12G. 

Night on the city of the Moor, 384. 

Night was down among the mountains, 601. 

No aimless wanderers, by the fiend Unrest, 451. 

No Berserk thirst of blood had they, 285. 

No bird-song floated down the hill, 191. 

No more these simple flowers belong, 241. 

Not always as the whirlwind's rush, 512. 

Not as a poor requital of the joy, 219. 

Not on Penobscot's wooded bank the spires, 295. 

Not unto us who did but seek, 425. 

Not vainly did old poets tell, 223. 

Not vainly we waited and counted the hours, 626. 

Not without envy Wealth at times must look, 

467. 
Not with the splendors of the days of old, 347. 
Now, joy and thanks forever, 380. 

Ary Scheffer ! when beneath thine eye, 408. 

Christ of God, whose life and death, 556. 

dearest bloom the seasons know, 568. 

O dearly loved, 226. 

O dwellers in the stately towns, 278. 

O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands, 

184. 
Of all that Orient lands can vaunt, 390. 
Of all the rides since the birth of time, 66. 
O friends ! with whom my feet have trod, 542. 
Of rights and of wrongs, G28. 
Oh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with ill, 

552. 
" Oh, for a knight like Bayard, 237. 
Oh, greenly and fair in tlie lands of the sun, 476. 
Oh, none in all the world before, 419. 
O Holy Father ! just and true, 345. 
Oh, praise an' tanks ! De Lord he come, 416. 
Oh, thicker, deeper, darker growing, 248. 
Oh, well may Essex sit forlorn, 259. 
" O Lady fair, these silks of mine are beautiful 

and rare, 3. 
Old friend, kind friend ! lightly down, 234. 
Olor Iscanus queries : Why should we, 410. 
O lonely bay of Trinity, 316. 
O Mother Earth ! upon thy lap, 374. 
O Mother State ! the winds of March, 255. 
Once more, dear friends, you meet beneath, 420. 
Once more, all-adjusting Death, 267. 



Once more, O Mountains of the North, unveil, 

193. 
Once more on yonder laurelled height, 275. 
One day, along the electric wire, 239. 
One hymn more, O my lyre, 516. 
One morning of the first sad Fall, 269. 
One Sabbath day my friend and I, 114. 
O Norah, lay your basket down, 44. 
On page of thine I cannot trace, 474. 
On the isle of Penikese, 552. 
On these green banks, where falls too soon, 578. 
On the wide lawn the snow lay deep, 501. 
Painter of the fruits and flowers, 292. 
O people-chosen ! are ye not, 427. 
O Poet rare and old, 457. 
O river winding to the sea, 583. 
State prayer-founded ! never hung, 395. 
O storied vale of Merrimac, 29G. 
O strong, upwelling prayers of faith, 54. 
O Thou, whose presence went before, 335. 
Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand, 288. 
Our fellow-comitrymen in chains, 332. 
Our vales are sweet with fern and rose, 189. 
Out and in the river is winding, 84. 
Outbound, your bark awaits you. Were I One, 

294. 
Out from Jerusalem, 148. 
Over the threshold of his pleasant home, 168. 
Over the wooded northern ridge, 100. 

Pardon a stranger hand that gives, 625. 
Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare, 540. 
Piero Luca, known of all the town, 309. 
Pipes of the misty moorlands, 69. 
Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass, 574. 
Poor and inadequate the shadow-play, 502. 
Pray give the " Atlantic," 628. 
" Put up the sword ! " The voice of Christ once 
more, 467. 

Raze these long blocks of brick and stone, 91. 
Red as the banner which enshrouds, 601. 
Right in the track where Sherman, 428. 
Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see, 302. 
Robert Rawlin ! — Frosts were falling, 61. 

Sad Mayflower ! watched by winter stars, 183. 
Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the herds, 419. 
Sarah Greenleaf, of eighteen years, 622. 
Say, whose is this fair picture, which the light, 

619. 
Scarce had the solemn Sabbath-bell, 385. 
Seeress of the misty Norland, 227. 
She came and stood in the Old South Church, 

149. 
She sang alone, ere womanhood had known, 585. 
She sings by her wheel at that low cottage-door, 

335. 
She was a fair young girl, yet on her brow, 604. 
Should you go to Centre Harbor, 626. 
Silence o'er sea and earth, 600. 
Smoothing soft the nestling head, 571. 
So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn, 230. 
Some die too late and some too soon, 231. 
So spake Esalas : so, in words of flame, 243. 
So stood of old the holy Christ, 558. 
So this is all, — the utmost reach, 344. 
Sound now the trumpet warningly, 625. 
Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands, 

556. 
Spare me, dread angel of reproof, 541. 
Speak and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward 

far away, 41. 
Spirit of the frozen North, 600. 



650 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



stand still, luy soul, in the silent dark, 523. 

Statesman, I thank thee ! and, if yet dissent, 410. 

Still, as of old, in Beavor's Vale, 512. 

Still in thy streets, O Paris ! doth the stain, 448. 

Still linger in our noon of time, 55G. 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 499. 

Stranger and traveller, 565. 

Stream of my fathers ! sweetly still, 173. 

Strike home, strong-hearted man ! Down to the 

root, 222. 
Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines, 588. 
Sunlight upon Judaea's hills, 513. 
Sweetest of all childlike dreams, 195. 

Take our hands, James Russell Lowell, 264. 
Talk not of sad November, when a day, 209. 
Tauler, the preacher, walked, one autumn day, 

52. 
Thank God for rest, where none molest, 427. 
Thank God for the token ! one lip is still free, 

342. 
Thanks for thy gift, 228. 
The age is dull and mean. Men creep, 392. 
The autumn-time has come, 499. 
The beaver cut his timber, 94. 
The Benedictine Echard, 560. 
The birds against the April wind, 423. 
The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon 

its Southern way, 356. 
The Bro\vnie sits in the Scotchman's room, 6. 
The burly driver at my side, 229. 
The cannon's brazen lips are cold, 453. 
The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken, 210. 
The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake, 529. 
The cross, if rightly borne, shall be, 237. 
The day is closing dark and cold, 43. 
The day's sharp strife is ended now, 466. 
The dreadful burden of our sins we feel, 629. 
The eagle, stooping from yon snow-blown peaks, 

585. 
The elder folks shook hands at last, 546. 
The end has come, as come it must, 289. 
The evil days have come, the poor, 387. 
The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke, 551. 
The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse, 412. 
The flags of war like storm-birds fly, 418. 
The fourteen centuries fall away, 537. 
The goodman sat beside his door, 17. 
The great work laid upon his twoscore years, 

250. 
The gulf of seven and fifty years, 294. 
The harp at Nature's advent strung, 324. 
The Khan came from Bokhara town, 151. 
The land, that, from the rule of kings, 295. 
The land was pale with famine, 110. 
The lowliest born of all the land, 263. 
The mercy, O Eternal One, 572. 
The moon has set : while yet the dawn, 387. 
The name the Gallic exile bore, 505. 
The new world honors him whose' lofty plea, 585. 
The old Squire said, as he stood by his gate, 156. 
The Pagan's myths through marble lips are 

spoken, 526. 
The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine, 271. 
The pilgrim and stranger who through the day, 

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 93. 

The pleasant isle of Riigen looks the Baltic 

water o'er, 169. 
The prophet stood, 507. 
The proudest now is but my peer, 458. 
The Quaker of the olden time, 431. 
The Rabbi Ishmael, with the woe and sin, 156. 
The Rabbi Nathan twoscore years and ten, 111. 



There are streams which are famous in history's 

story, 598. 
The river hemmed with leaning trees, 197. 
The robins sang in the orchard, the buds into 

blossoms grew, 124. 
The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing, 276. 
The same old baffling questions ! O my friend, 

532. 
The shade for me, but over thee, 534. 
The shadows grow and deepen round me, 569. 
The shadows round the inland sea, 176. 
The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth, 158. 
The sky is ruddy in the east, 442. 
The soul itself its awful witness is, 567. 
The South-land boasts its teeming cane, 454. 
The storm and peril overpast, 430. 
The storm-wind is howling, 594. 
The subtle power in perfume found, 207. 
The summer warmth has left the sky, 199. 
The sunlight glitters keen and bright, 174. 
The suns of eighteen centuries have shone, 433. 
The sun that brief December day, 487. 
The sweet spring day is glad with music, 252. 
The sword was sheathed : in April's sun, 575. 
The tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails have 

spread, 463. 
The tent-lights glimmer on the land, 416. 
The threads our hands in blindness spin, 559. 
The time of gifts has come again, 197. 
The tossing spray of Cocheco's fall, 160. 
The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must 

shed, 571. 
The wave is breaking on the shore, 350. 
The winding way the serpent takes, 112. 
The years are but half a score, 471. 
The years are many since his hand, 240. 
The years are many since, in youth and hope, 

114. 
The years that since we met have flown, 628. 
They hear Thee not ! God ! nor see, 520. 
They left their home of summer ease, 201. 
They sat in silent watchfulness, 16. 
They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, 216. 
Thine are all the gifts, O God, 289. 
Thine is a grief, the depth of which another, 

224. 
This day, two hundred years ago, 269. 
Thou dwellest not, O Lord of all, 281. 
Though flowers have perished at the touch, 204. 
Thou hast fallen in thine armor, 211. 
Tlirice welcome from the Land of Flowers, 292. 
Thrice welcome to thy sisters of the East, 373. 
Through heat and cold, and shower and sun, 444. 
Through the long hall the shuttered windows 

shed, 398. 
Through the streets of Marblehead, 290. 
Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old, 530. 
Thy error, Frc^mont, simply was to act, 413. 
'T is over, Moses ! All is lost, 370. 
'Tis said that in the Holy Land, 479. 
'Tis the noon of the spring-time, yet never a 

bird, 178. 
To-day the plant by Williams set, 281. 
Token of friendship, true and tried, 352. 
To kneel before some saintly shrine, 206. 
To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing 

rise to-day, 22. 
" To the winds give our banner ! 15. 
To weary hearts, to mourning homes, 522. 
Traveller ! on thy journey toiling, 8. 
Tritemius of Herbipolis, one day, 65. 
'T was night. The tranquil moonlight smile, 327. 
Type of two mighty continents ! — combining, 

234. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



651 



Under the great hill sloping bare, 152. 

Under the shadow of a cloud, the light, G27. 

Unfathomed deep, unfetter'd waste, 599. 

Unnoted as the setting of a star, 2G(3. 

Up and down the village streets, 80. 

Up from the meadows rich with corn, 420. 

Up from the sea the wild north wind is blowing, 

587. 
Up, laggards of Freedom ! — our free flag is cast, 

396. 
Up the hillside, down the glen, 361.- 
Up the streets of Aberdeen, 40. 

Voice of a people suffering long, 429. 

Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known, 566. 

Wake, sisters, wake ! the day-star shines, 559. 
Wave of an awful torrent, thronging down, 

G19. 
Weary of jangling noises never stilled, 570. 
We cross the prairie as of old, 391. 
We give thy natal day to hope, 469. 
We have been wandering for many days, 27. 
We have opened the door, 150. 
Welcome home again, brave seaman ! with thy 

thoughtful brow and gray, 368. 
We live by Faith ; but Faith is not the slave, 

566. 
Well speed thy mission, bold Iconoclast, 452. 
Well thouglit ! who would not rather hear, 243. 
We praise not now the poet's art, 249. 
We sat together, last May-day, and talked, 261. 
We saw the slow tides go and come, 198. 
We see not, know not ; all our way, 411. 
We wait beneath the furnace-blast, 412. 
What flecks the outer gray beyond, 318. 
What shall I say, dear friends, to whom I owe, 

628. 



What shall I wish him? Strength and health, 

629. 
What though around the blazes, 363. 
When first I saw our bainier wave, 417. 
When Freedom, on lier natal day, 342. 
When on my day of life the night is falling, 568. 
When the breath divine is flowing, 517. 
When the reaper's task was ended, and the sum- 
mer wearing late, 72. 
Where are we going ? where are we going, 372. 
Where ceaseless Spring her garland twines, 284. 
Where, over heathen doom-rings and gray stones 

of the Horg, 139. 
Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles, 305. 
Where Time the mea&ure of his hours, 510. 
White clouds, whose shadows liaunt the deep, 180. 
Who gives and hides the giving hand, 560. 
Who, looking backward from his manhood's 

prime, 528. 
Who stands on that cliff, like a figure of stone, 

608. 
" Why urge the long, unequal fight, 460. 
Wildly round our woodland quarters, 441. 
With a cold and wintry noon-light, 366. 
With a glory of winter sunshine, 264. 
With clearer light, Cross of the South, shme 

forth, 466. 
With fifty years between you and your well-kept 

wedding vow, 284. 
With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight, 

565. 
With wisdom far beyond her years, 255. 

Years since (but names to me before), 253. 
Yes, let them gather! Summon forth, 353. 
Ye.%, pile tl>e marble o'er him ! It is well, 215. 
You flung your taunt across the wave, 415. 
You scarcely need my tardy thanks, 480. 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Abraham Davenport, 322. 

Abram Morrison, 507. 

Adams, John Quiucy, 5tl3. 

Adjustment, 571. 

After Election, -iGG. 

Albmn Verses, G25. 

All's Well, 52'J. 

Among the Hills, 102. 

Amy Wentworth, 97. 

Andrew Rykman's Prayer, 539. 

Angel of Patience, The, 522. 

Angels of Buena Vista, The, 41. 

Anniversary Poem, 420. 

Answer, The, 541. 

April, 178. 

Arisen at Last, 390. 

Artist of the Beautiful, An, 2G6. 

Astriea, 457. 

Astnea at the Capitol, 417. 

At Eventide, 502. 

At Last, 568. 

At Port Royal, 416. 

At School-Close, 289. 

At Washington, 3GG. 

Autogi'aph, An, 506. 

Autograph, An, 628. 

Autumn Thoughts, 177. 

Banished from Massachusetts, 1G8. 
Barbara Frietchie, 421. 
Barclay of Ury, 40. 
Barefoot Boy, The, 484. 
Bartholdi Statue, The, 295. 
Hartlett, William Francis, 259. 
Battle Autumn of 1862, Tlie, 418. 
Bay of Seven Islands, The, 157. 
Benedicite, 233. 
Benevolence, 598. 
Between the Gates, 587. 
Birchbrook Mill, 164. 
Birthday Wreath, The, 586. 
Bolivar, 604. 
Book, The, 566. 
Branded Hand, The, 368. 
Brewing of Soma, The, 551. 
Bridal of Pennacook, The, 27. 
Brother of Mercy, Tlie, 309. 
Brown Dwarf of Rvigen, The, 169. 
Brown of Ossawatomie, 247. 
Bryant on his Birthday, 249. 
Burial of Barber, 394. 
Burning Drift- Wood, 581. 
Burns, 241. 
By their Works, 566. 

Cable Hymn, The, 316. 
Calef in Boston, 454. 
Call of the Christian, The, 512. 
Captain's Well, The, 576. 
Cassandra Southwick, 22. 
Centennial Hymn, 288. 
Chalkley Hall, 220. 



Changeling, The, 311. 

Channing, 223. 

Chapel of the Hermits, The, 46. 

Charity, 595. 

Chicago, 283. 

Child-Songs, 556. 

Christian Slave, The, 359. 

Christian Tourists, The, 451. 

Christmas Carmen, A, 556. 

Christmas of 1888, The, 575. 

Cities of the Plain, The, 511. 

Clear Vision, The, 548. 

Clerical Oppressors, 339. 

Cobbler Keezar's Vision, 94. 

Common Question, The, 543. 

Conductor Bradley, 144. 

Conquest of Finland, The, 461. 

Countess, The, 100. 

Crisis, The, 381. 

Cross, The, 237. 

Crucifixion, Tlie, 513. 

Cry of a Lost Soul, The, 539. 

Curse of the Charter-Breakers, The, 378. 

Cypress- Tree of Ceylon, The, 16. 

Day, A, 209. 

Day's Journey, A, 629. 

Dead Feast of the Kol-Folk, The, 150. 

Dead Ship of Harpsvvell, The, 318. 

Dedication of a School-house. See Our State. 

Deity, The, 597. 

Democracy, 432. 

Demon of the Study, The, 6. 

Derne, 384. 

Disarmament, 4G7. 

Disenthralled, The, 458. 

Divine Compassion, 550. 

Dr. Kane in Cuba, 593. 

Dole of Jarl Thorkell, The, 110. 

Double-Headed Snake of Newbury, The, 73. 

Dream of Argyle, The, 591. 

Dream of Pio Nono, The, 458. 

Dream of Smnnier, A, 176. 

Drovers, The, 444. 

Drunkard to his Bottle, The, 603. 

Earthquake, The, 600. 

Easter Flower Gift, An, 568. 

Ego, 474. 

" Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott," 412. 

Eleanor. See My Playmate. 

Elliott, 230. 

Emancipation Group, The, 429. 

Eternal Goodness, The, 542. 

Eva, 268. 

Evening in Burmah, 621. 

Eve of Election, The, 462. 

Exile's Departure, The, 597. 

Exiles, The, 17. 

Expostulation, 333. 

Extract from "A New England Legend," 5. 

Ezekiel, 519, 



INDEX OF TITLES 



653 



Fair Quakeress, The, 604. 

Faniilist's Hymn, The, 518. 

Farewell, A, G'J8. 

Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother, The, 34G. 

Female Martyr, The, 4. 

First-Day Thoughts, 532. 

First Flowers, The, 188. 

Fishermen, The, 440. 

Flowers in Winter, 182. 

FoUen. See Expostulation. 

Follen: on Reading his Essay on " The Future 

State," 218. 
For an Autumn Festival, 271. 
Forgiveness, 478. 
For Righteousness' Sake, 392. 
Forster, William, 240. 
Fountain, The, 8. 
Fragment, A, 620. 
Fratricide, The, 606. 
Freed Islands, The, 369. 
Freedom in Brazil, 466. 
Frt5raont Campaign Song, A, 625. 
Friend's Burial, The, 555. 
From Perugia, 463. 
Frost Spirit, The, 172. 
Fruit-Gift, The, 182. 
Funeral Tree of the Sokokis, 13. 

Gallows, The, 433. 

Garden, 292. 

Garibaldi, 252. 

Garrison, 430. 

Garrison of Cape Ann, The, 63. 

Gift of Triteraius, The, 65. 

Giving and Taking, 560. 

Godspeed, 294. 

Golden Wedding of Longwood, The, 284. 

Gone, 222. 

Grave by the Lake, The, 305. 

Greeting, 506. 

Greeting, A, 292. 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 258. 

Hampton Beach, 174. 

Haschish, The, 390. 

Haverhill, 583. 

Hazel Blossoms, 199. 

Healer, The, 558. 

Help, 566. 

Henchman, The, 150. 

Hermit of the Thebaid, The, 54. 

Hero, The, 237. 

Hill-Top, The, 229. 

Hive at Gettysburg, The, 428. 

Holmes, O. W., on his Eightieth Birthday, 582. 

Holy Land, The, 527. 

Home-Coming of the Bride, The, 622. 

Home.stead, The, 167. 

Hooper, Lucy, 217. 

Howard at Atlanta, 428. 

How Mary Grew, 255. 

How the Robin Came, 168. 

How the Women went from Dover, 160. 

Human Sacrifice, The, 436. 

Hunters of Men, The, 336. 

Huskers, The, 445. 

Hymn for the Celebration of Emancipation at 
Newburyport, 425. 

Hymn for the House of Worship at George- 
town, 281. 

Hymn for the Opening of Plymouth Church, 285. 

Hymn for the Opening of Thomas Starr King's 
House of Worship, 280. 

Hymn of the Children, 289. 



Hymn of the Dunkers, 559. 

Hymn : " O Holy Father ! just and true," 345. 

Hymn: "O Thou whose presence went before," 

335. 
Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj, 572. 
Hymns from the French of Lamartine, 516. 
Hjnnn .sung at Christmas by the Scholars of St. 

Helena's Island, S. C, 419. 

Ichabod, 230. 

In Memory, 263. 

In Peace, 232. 

In Quest, 554. 

In Rememlirauce of Joseph Sturge, 245. 

In School-Days, 499. 

Inscriptions, 565. 

In the Evil Days, 387. 

In the " Old South," 149. 

Invocation, 530. 

Isabel, G07. 

Isabella of Austria, 605. 

Italy, 465. 

" I was a Straiiger, and ye took me in," 288. 

John Underbill, 142. 

Jubilee Singers, The, 429. 

Judith at the Tent of Holof ernes, 601. 

June on the Merrimac, 278. 

Kallundborg Church, 315. 
Kansas Emigrants, The, 391. 
Kathleen, 44. 
Kenoza Lake, 270. 
Khan's Devil, The, 151. 
King, Thomas Starr, 249. 
King's Missive, The, 152. 
King Solomon and the Ants, 148. 
King Volmer and Elsie, 139. 
Kinsman, 284. 
Knight of St. John. The, 21. 
Kossuth, 234. 

Lady Franklin, 594. 

Lakeside, The, 176. 

Lament, A, 210. 

Landmarks, The, 290. 

Last Eve of Summer, The, 588. 

Last Walk in Antunm, The, 184. 

"Laurels, The," 278. 

Laus Deo, 425. 

Lay of Old Time, A, 269. 

Legacy, A, 509. 

Legend of St. Mark, The, 43. 

Legend of the Lake, A, 626. 

Leggett's Monument, 215. 

Letter from a Missionary of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church South, in Kansas, to a Distin- 
guished Politician, 392. 

Letter, A, supposed to be written by the Chair- 
man of the Central Clique, at Concord, N. H., 
370. 

Letter to Lucy Larcom, 627. 

Lexington, 285. 

Library, The, 286. 

Light that is felt. The, 571. 

Lines. See Arisen at Last. 

Lines. See At Washington. 

Lines. See For Righteousness' Sake. 

Lines. -S'^*' Freed Islands, The. 

Lines. See Gallows, The. 

Lines. See Lost Statesman, The. 

Lines. See My Thanks. 

Lines. See Official Piety. 

Lines. See Ritner. 



fi> c^' 



6^4- 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Lines. See Summons, A. 


Ocean, 599. 


Lines from a Letter to a Young Clerical Friend, 


Official Piety, 389. 


371. 


Old Burying-Ground, The, 189. 


Lines on a Fly-Leaf, 250. 


On a Fly-Leaf of Longfellow's Poems, 628. 


Lines on Leaving Appledore, 627. 


On a Prayer-Book, 408. , .^ 


Lines on the Death of S. Oliver Torrey, 212. 


One of the Signers, 296. 


Lines on the Portrait of a Celebrated Publisher, 


On Receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake Su- 


382. 


perior, 177. 


Lines written in an Album, 629. 


On the Big Horn, 471. 


Lines written in the Book of a Friend. See 


Oriental Maxims, 567. / 


Ego. 


Our Autocrat, 260. I 


Lines, written on the Departure of Joseph Sturge, 


Our Country, 469. / 


592. 


Our Master, 544. / 


Lost Occasion, The, 231. 


Our River, 275. | 


L<ist Statesman, The, 376. 


Our State, 454. f 


Lowell, James Russell, 583. 


Outdoor Reception, An, 578.' 


Lumberman, The, ■441. 


Over-Heart, The, 535. 




Overruled, 559. 


Mabel Martin : A Harvest Idyl, 75. 


Ouverture, Toussaint L', 327. 


Maids of Attitash, The, 313. 




Mantle of St. John de Matha, The, 423, 


Paean, 380. 


Marais du Cygne, Le, 395. 


Pageant, The, 195. 


Marguerite, 124. 


Palatine, The, 319. 


Martha Mason. See Ranger, The. 


Pale.stine, 514. 


Mary Garvin, 58. 


Palm-Tree, The, 191. 


Massachusetts, 622. 


Panorama, The, 398. 


Massachusetts to Virginia, 356. 


Pass of the Sierra, The, 396. 


Maud Muller, 55. 


Past and Coming Year, The, 619. 


Mayflowers, The, 183. 


Pastoral Letter, The, 344. 


Meetmg, The, 546. 


Peace Autumn, The, 427. 


Meeting Waters, The, 595. 


Peace Convention at Brussels, The, 448. 


Memorial, A, 248. 


Peace of Europe, The, 457. 


Memories, 472. 


Pennsylvania Hall, 347. 


Memory, A, 482. 


Pennsylvania Pilgrim, The, 126. 


Memory of Burns, The, 244. 


Pentucket, 10. 


Men of Old, The, 452. 


Pictures, 179. 


Merrimac, The, 173. 


Pine-Tree, The, 364. 


Metacom, 601. 


Pipes at Lucknow, The, 69. 


Milton, on Memorial Window, 585. 


Playmate, The. See My Playmate. 


Minister's Daughter, The, 563. 


Poet and the Children, The, 264. 


Miriam, 114. 


Poetical Trio in the City of Gotham, To a, 623. 


Missionary, The, 619. 


Poor Voter on Election Day, The, 458. 


Mithridates at Chios, 415. 


Powers, Preston, Inscription for Bass-Relief, 585. 


Mogg Megoue, 608. 


Prayer of Agassiz, The, 552. 


Moloch in State Street, 387. 


Prayer-Seeker, The, 550. 


Moral Warfare, The, 342. 


Preacher, The, 84. 


Mount Agiochook, 603. 


Prelude, The. See Greeting. 


Mountain Pictures, 193. 


Pressed .Gentian, The, 197. 


Mrs. Choate's House- Warming, 628. 


Prisoner for Debt, The, 450. 


Mulford, 266. 


Prisoners of Naples, The, 455. 


My Birthday, 501. 


Problem, The, 467. 


My Dream, 483. 


Proclamation, The, 419. 


My Namesake, 480. 


Proem, 1. 


My Playmate, 93. 


Prophecy of Samuel Sewall, The, 80. 


My Psalm, 485. 


Pumpliin, The, 476. 


My Soul and I, 523. 




Mystery, A, 197. 


Quaker Alumni, The, 272. 


Mystic's Cliristmas, The, 568. 


Quaker of the Olden Time, The, 431. 


My Thanks, 479. 


Quakers are out. The, 626. 


My Triumph, 499. 


Questions of Life, 530. 


My Trust, 504. 






Rabbi Ishmael, 156. 


Name, A, 505. 


Randolph of Roanoke, 374. 


Naples, 247. 


Ranger, The, 61. 


Nauhaught, the Deacon, 121. 


Rantoul, 239. 


Neall, Daniel, 372. 


Raphael, 473. 


New Exodus, The, 461. 


Red R ding-Hood, 501. 


New Hampsliire, 3(')4. 


Red River Voyageur, The, 84. 


New Wife and the Old, The, 25. 


Reformer, The, 447. 


New Year, The, 350. 


Relic, The, 3.52. 


Night and Death, 594. 


Remembrance, 480. 


Norsemen, The, 11. 


Rendition, The, 389. 


Norembega, 112. 


Requirement, 566. 


Norumbega Hall, 295. 


Requital, 166. 



